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PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 




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THE 



PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 



BY 



Rev. GEORGE E. MERRILL 

Author of 
The Story of the Manuscripts,"' "The Reasonable Christ," etc. 




PHILADELPHIA 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

1420 Chestnut Street 

1894 






Copyright 1894 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



A P w 




JAN 29 1969 



^ 



PREFACE 



Some years ago the preparation of a volume 
entitled, "The Story of the Manuscripts," met 
with the kind favor of the public, and proved the 
general interest in the documentary evidence for 
the text of the New Testament, the theme of which 
it treated. That volume, I believe, was the first 
of the many that have been published seeking to 
give in a popular way the results of the special- 
ist's labors in the textual department of biblical 
studies. In the meantime the discovery of many 
ancient documents and the progress of archaeo- 
logical research, the appearance of the Canterbury 
Revision, the publication of Westcott and Hort's 
Greek New Testament, of Gregory's Prolegomena 
to TischendorPs eighth edition, and of other im- 
portant works, as well as great advances in the 
critical study of the Bible, have enhanced the 
public interest in the whole subject of the docu- 
mentary sources of the sacred text. To meet a 
desire frequently expressed, this volume has been 
written, bringing the story down to the present 
time and treating of the entire Bible. This work 
is wholly independent of the former book to 
which reference has been made, pursuing a differ- 
ent plan and being independently, written, and I 
do not know of any book that covers exactly the 
same eround. 



6 PREFACE 

It would be impossible to mention in detail the 
multitude of works which have been consulted in 
the preparation of these pages, but in the most 
important instances they have been named in 
appended notes. I wish to acknowledge my 
indebtedness to all published sources of informa- 
tion which I have found accessible, and especially 
to the favor shown me by the great libraries which 
have given me access to original documents and 
valuable fac similes. 

The reproduction in this volume of whole pages 
of text in fac simile has been deemed a better 
method of illustration, than to present plates 
containing only a few lines of text of the original 
size. The reader by this method gets a better 
idea of the appearance of the original page, and 
while the exigencies of a modern book demand a 
great reduction in the size of the fac simile^ the 
use of a lens will at once restore the text to its 
proper dimensions. 

We cannot know too much about the Bible. 
Light thrown upon its pages is sure to blend with 
the light that shines from its pages, and in the 
resplendent radiance of its truth we cannot fail to 
see the way of life. The history of the Bible 
merely as a book is of profound interest and im- 
portance, but that history only lends itself to the 
better knowledge of what the Bible really is in 
its content, and the message of the book appeals 
with clearer voice to our reverence and our love. 

G. E. M. 

Newton, Mass., October, 1894. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
The Bible of Jesus and the Apostles, .... n 

CHAPTER II. 
The Bible of the Christian Church, .... 28 

CHAPTER III. 
The Hebrew Manuscripts, 40 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Hebrew Manuscripts (Continued), .... 66 

CHAPTER V. 

The Greek Translations, 81 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Targums and the Talmud, 94 

CHAPTER VII. 

Other Versions and Literature, 109 

CHAPTER VIII. , 

Materials for the New Testament Text, . . 119 

CHAPTER IX. 
Classes and Characteristics of Manuscripts, . 138 

CHAPTER X. 
The Science and the Critics, 150 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XL 
The Two Oldest Greek Manuscripts, . . . . 171 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Great Uncials of the Fifth Century, . . 194 

CHAPTER XIII. 
A Corrupt Codex and an Illustrated Manu- 
script, 201 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Curious Fragments and Discoveries, . . . . 212 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Cursives or Minuscules, 220 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Versions and Fathers, 226 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Later Discoveries, 250 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Illustrations of Criticism, 265 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Conclusion, 280 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



i. The Convent of St. Catherine, . . Frontispiece 

2. Hebrew Scrolls, 43 

3. Codex Ephraemi, C 145 

(A Palimpsest.) 

4. Group of Biblical Scholars, .• 157 

5 Codex Vaticanus, B 171 

6. Codex Friderico-Augustanus, 183 

(Codex Sinaiticus) 

7. Codex Alexandrinus, A 195 

8. Jesus Cleansing the Temple and The Good 

Samaritan, 208 

9. Codex W d , Fragments on Glass, 214 



THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 

ST. PAUL, "the aged," was in prison at Rome 
when he wrote his second letter to Timothy, 
beseeching him to come to him at once, "before win- 
ter," after which it might be too late. One little pas- 
sage in that letter is pathetic : " The cloak that I left 
at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest bring with 
thee, and the books, especially the parchments." 
The old cloak would be needed in the prison in 
the coming winter ; but while its folds would be 
drawn close about the apostle's form, the inner 
man — the great soul — would be quickening its life 
by the perusal of the books, and most of all the 
parchments, which it had been necessary to leave 
in the house of a friend far away on the Asian 
shore. What were these books and parchments it 
may be idle to conjecture, and yet we know the 
spirit of the man and shall not go far astray if we 
think of him as longing for the books of his faith, 

ii 



12 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

dear to him in their mere externals, even as we 
come to love our Bibles worn with much using, 
and perhaps marked everywhere in their margins 
with the signs, familiar to our eyes, which we 
have put against favorite texts. The books were 
biblia — bibles, scrolls of papyrus ; for hiblia was 
the Greek word referring to the papyrus plant 
and the books made out of its stalk when pre- 
pared for writing. The parchments were mem- 
branes, if we transfer the Greek word used in the 
passage ; but we shall understand it better by the 
translation — parchments, the skins of animals care- 
fully dressed, upon which the text of the book or 
letter was written. It is not very likely that Paul 
was now longing for any of the classical writings 
of Greece or Rome. He could have gotten those 
heathen documents much more easily than by 
sending to Troas for them. It was not to the old 
books of Gamaliel's school in Jerusalem that he 
was now turning, except as some of these had been 
the religious books of his fathers, the revered 
Scriptures of the Jews. Most likely these scrolls 
of papyrus and parchment were copies of some of 
the Old Testament books, and possibly some brief 
and fundamental records from which came later 
some of the writings now known as the New 
Testament, memoranda of oral teachings by some 
of the twelve who had companied with Jesus. 
Of this we can only conjecture, but the thought 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 1 3 

suggests inquiry, and the question leaps to the 
lips : What was the Bible of the apostles ? What 
indeed was the Bible of Jesus, from which he 
reasoned with the doctors in the temple in his 
boyhood and by which he fortified himself against 
temptation and endured even unto the death of 
the cross ? For with his last breath he cried out 
in the language of a psalm, and the incidents of 
his last hours were fulfillments of ancient prophe- 
cies. 

The Bible of Jesus was the Old Testament as 
we have it, containing the books which we recog- 
nize as of sacred authority, and probably no others, 
as we shall soon show more particularly. 

This Bible, however, was in two forms. It was 
in the Hebrew language, and in this form was 
always used in public worship in the synagogues 
of Palestine •, but it had also been translated into 
Greek, and in this form was the Bible of common 
and private use. This translation was begun in 
Alexandria about the year B. c. 275, and finished 
about the year b. c. 130. It was called the Sep- 
tuagint, or the Seventy. 

But why was this translation in such general 
use? Was not the native tongue of the Jews 
Hebrew ? Did they not dwell in their own land 
without the need of a translation in which to read 
their own Bible? And if the Jews who were 
scattered abroad understood some other language 



14 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

better than the Hebrew, why should that strange 
language make its way into the Holy Land and 
into the very oracles of the home country and 
religion ? 

The answer is found in the fact that the Jews 
in Palestine as well as elsewhere had almost ceased 
to speak their own language, and that another 
tongue had become the means of daily communi- 
cation, and still another had domesticated itself 
among them. The Hebrew was retained as a 
sacred language, and perhaps was often used in 
formal address, but it had long since passed out 
of common use. The Aramaic had supplanted it 
altogether. 

"How and when the change was effected, " 
says Schiirer, 1 u cannot now be ascertained. At 
any rate it was not the exiles who returned 
from Babylon who brought the Aramaic thence, 
for the post-exilian literature of the Israelites 
is also chiefly Hebrew. Nor was the Aramaic 
dialect of Palestine the Eastern, or Babylonian, 
but the Western Aramaic. Hence it must have 
penetrated gradually to Palestine from the North. " 
Indeed it has been a common error to suppose 
that the new language was domesticated in Pales- 
tine only after the Exile and as one of its results. 
But, as Professor Schiirer intimates in our quota- 

1 " History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ," Vol. II., 
ch. I, pp. 8-10. 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 1 5 

tion, and as Sayce shows, 1 and as Kautzsch dis- 
tinctly says : ' ' The Jews could not take a dialect 
from Babylon which was not spoken there ! " 2 In 
fact the West Aramaic was the dialect spoken be- 
tween the upper Euphrates and the Mediterranean 
Sea, and in very early times it began to advance 
southward and to dispossess the southern native 
dialects until it became the common language in 
Syria, Palestine, and the adjacent countries on the 
east. About the middle of the second century 
before Christ it was quite in the ascendency as the 
spoken language, and even began to appear in for- 
mal literature, as in some passages of the book of 
Daniel and other writings. But if the Aramaic had 
achieved this position as the common language of the 
people before Christ was born, the old Hebrew still 
held its place in the synagogues, in literature, and 
probably was to some degree known by the people 
at large. The zeal of the learned, and the rever- 
ence for the sacred speech of the divine oracles, 
served to keep the knowledge of the Hebrew alive, 
and it would be a mistake to suppose that it 
occupied in the time of Jesus such a position as 
that now held by the Greek and the L,atin. In 

1 " Introduction to the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther," 

P- 37- 

2 " Hebraica " (Quarterly), Vol. I., No. 2 (Oct., 1884), article, " The 
Aramaic Language," by Prof. E. Kautzsch, D. D. (Tubingen), 
translated by Prof. C. R. Brown, D. D , pp. in, 112. 



1 6 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

this sense it probably was not a " dead language.' ' 
Delitzsch 1 believed that "our Lord and his 
apostles thought and spoke for the most part in 
Hebrew," though that they ordinarily spoke in 
Hebrew may be more than questioned. But cer- 
tainly the Hebrew was still used in writings that 
the people would be expected to understand. 
"The inscriptions on coins, the epitaphs, the 
liturgic prayers were Hebrew. The form of the 
laws was Hebrew, as appears from their codifica- 
tion in the Mishna ; also the book in which, as 
Papias says, Matthew had collected the sermons 
of the Lord, was written in the ' Hebrew dialect,' " 
and Prof. Delitzsch considers this to have been 
not the Aramaic, but the "holy language, the 
language of the temple worship, of synagogical 
and domestic prayer ; of all formulas of benedic- 
tion, of the traditional law." And yet, even if the 
Hebrew had not wholly passed away, we are quite 
sure that the Aramaic had driven it out from the 
common speech, and from all common usage. 

It might seem, therefore, that there was need 
of a translation of the Bible from Hebrew into the 
Aramaic, and so far as we have pursued the in- 
quiry it does not yet appear why the common 

1 In the " Hebrew New Testament of the British and Foreign Bible 
Society" (Leipzig, 1883), quoted by Prof. C. R. Brown in the" He- 
braica" (Quarterly), I., 2, p. 101, note. In opposition, see Prof. C. 
H. Toy, " Quotations in the New Testament," Intro., § L, I. 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 1 7 

Bible of the time should be in Greek. In fact no 
Aramaic Bible was made at this time for the use 
of the people. There was an intense prejudice 
against it until a much later date. Nor was there 
any real need of it, for another medium was even 
more ready to serve as interpreter, namely, the 
Greek tongue. 

During three centuries Palestine had been 
accustomed to hear several languages within its 
borders, and the chief of these was Greek. Alexan- 
der's arms had subjugated the world. In the land 
of the Jews, as in Babylonia and Egypt and all the 
surrounding lands, the Macedonian conqueror had 
established his sway. Caesarea, the second city 
in Palestine, was almost wholly peopled by men 
who spoke the Greek tongue. Sebonitis, Scyth- 
opolis, Gaza, Askelon, Sebaste, and many other 
cities in the land were Greek, while beyond 
Jordan the centers of population were principally 
Greek. In Egypt, Alexandria was the leading 
city, and here an immense number of Jews had 
been colonized, so that their familiarity with the 
Greek culture would naturally give an additional 
impulse to the introduction of the language into 
their native land, as there was always more or less 
intercourse between the colonists and the home 
country. When the Roman power came to the 
first place it did not negative the ascendency of 
Greek culture, for in Rome itself the fashion of 



1 8 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

the day was for everything Hellenic. Josephus, 
in "The Antiquities" (B. XV., 8), speaks of the 
course of Herod, and that chapter narrates l ' How 
ten men of the citizens of Jerusalem made a con- 
spiracy against Herod for the foreign practices he 
had introduced, which was a transgression of the 
laws of their country ; and concerning the building 
of Sebaste and Csesarea, and other edifices of 
Herod." This was the Herod who was king 
when Christ was born, and while he left no foreign 
custom or acquisition neglected by which he 
could enhance the glory of his reign, the Greek 
influence was paramount, as is seen from his giving 
Greek names to the cities, even Samaria, when 
rebuilt in honor of Augustus, receiving the 
name Sebaste. Indeed, during all the occupation 
of Palestine by the Roman armies, the Greek had 
not been driven out by the L,atin. The final 
result of the rivalry of these tongues in Palestine 
was more likely to be the general adoption of the 
Greek than of either of the others, L,atin or 
Aramaic. The Jew did not understand Latin ; 
the Roman was not familiar with Aramaic ; but 
the Greek tongue was comparatively familiar to 
both, and thus became the natural means of com- 
munication. It was exactly what had happened 
formerly in the case of Aramaic. Greek was now 
the lingua Franca, the language of business and 
diplomacy, well known in common life. 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 1 9 

If we seek an illustration among modern na- 
tions of its condition at the beginning of our era, 
Palestine may be described as having some like- 
ness to Switzerland, or Belgium, at the present 
time. In Switzerland, French and German are 
common, while a patois peculiar to certain sec- 
tions is often heard. In a recent summer, the 
writer's family was charmingly entertained by 
friends in Antwerp, and the native Flemish was 
spoken by domestics and others of their class, 
while French was used among the members of the 
family and in all ordinary conversation in polite 
circles, and the father wrote his books in French; 
meanwhile the older members of the household 
spoke English, and it was bravely attempted even 
by the children. 

So in Palestine, the several languages, Hebrew, 
Aramaic, Greek, Latin, performed their functions. 
We find official inscriptions either in Latin or 
Greek, or both. Recently a part of the old " wall 
of partition " between the court of the Gentiles 
and the courts of the Jews in the temple was dis- 
covered, and it bore a warning in Greek against 
trespassing beyond that boundary. Greek was 
upon coins minted for use among the Jews. The 
twelve disciples had Greek names among them, 
and the inscription on the cross was in Hebrew, 
and Greek, and Latin. Probably the sum of the 
whole matter may be correctly written thus : All 



20 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

the native Jews spoke Aramaic ; most of the 
better educated were very familiar • with Greek, 
and very many of the common people could speak 
it ; some could read and speak both Greek and 
I^atin ; while the ancient Hebrew was chiefly 
heard only in the synagogues and in formal ad- 
dress. Such a state of affairs gave ready access to 
the Bible in the Greek language. 

The Greek Bible, however, was not made for 
the Jews in Palestine, but for those who dwelt in 
great numbers in Alexandria, and in other parts 
of the world. The story of its making will be 
told upon a later page, when the characteristics 
and value of the Septuagint shall be considered 
at length ; but it is only necessary to note here, 
that having been made, it easily came into use, 
even in Palestine, and rendered unnecessary the 
translation of the Scriptures into the Aramaic. 
It was the people's Bible, easily obtained, far 
cheaper than the Hebrew scrolls, and doubtless it 
had wide circulation, coming into many homes, at 
least in some of its parts, and securing a firm hold 
upon the affections of all. 

But this Greek Bible which originated in Alex- 
andria had many other books in it besides those 
which we find in our English Bibles. These 
books are known under the term Apocrypha, 
which meant in the first instance, simply "with- 
drawn from publicity." The term was first ap- 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 21 

plied to the rolls which were put away because 
they were worn out, or had faults in the writing ; 
but then in a more metaphorical sense it was ap- 
plied to a book not suitable for public reading ; 
and still later to indicate a lack of genuineness or 
authenticity. It was in the last sense that the 
term was applied to those books connected with 
the Old Testament, for though they were always 
held in some esteem in Alexandria, they were 
never fully recognized in Palestine as a real part 
of the Bible. Indeed, it is probable that the 
common people in Palestine may have known 
very little of these extra books. In the whole 
New Testament there is not one well-defined quo- 
tation from them, though in a few instances pas- 
sages might seem to have a suggestion from apoc- 
ryphal sources, and in one case a possible reference 
to the book of Enoch is made. It must be re- 
membered that even with the Septuagint in com- 
mon use, the various books were not all included 
in. one roll or volume, but were in separate por- 
tions, and although a canonical book might have 
an apocryphal book appended to it in the same 
scroll, yet the main and leading place in the 
reader's mind would always be given to the law, 
or the psalms, or other canonical writing, so that 
the apocryphal writings might be almost un- 
known. It is significant that Jesus did not quote 
from them at all, and that any reference to them, 



22 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

except perhaps in one instance in the Epistle of 
Jude, is entirely wanting in the New Testament. 
But the thorough familiarity of Jesus and the 
apostles with the generally accepted books of the 
Greek Bible is plain from the quotations, since 
Jesus clearly used the Greek in thirty-three out 
of thirty-seven passages to which he referred. 
And St. Paul cries out (Rom. 4 : 3), "What saith 
the Scripture?" and then proceeds to quote ex- 
actly from the Septuagint, as indeed it was his 
usual habit to do. Of three hundred and fifty 
quotations in the New Testament, quite three 
hundred appear to be from the Greek and 
not from the Hebrew Bible. "The Scripture," 
therefore, in the time of Jesus, was a term ap- 
plied equally to the original Hebrew and to 
the common Greek translation. Plainly the 
truth, the spirit beneath the mere letter of 
Scripture, was regarded as the essential thing, 
and there was no servile attachment to the mere 
letter itself. Yet, as will be seen, the later regard 
for the letter of the Hebrew Bible was extreme, 
as affecting the integrity of the text containing 
the truth, and there were probably few chances of 
change in this respect at the time now under con- 
sideration. 

But if the Bible of Jesus in the Hebrew and 
the Greek contained the books which we have in 
our Bibles, and practically only those, it must be 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 23 

noted that the number and the order of the books 
in the Hebrew Bible are very different from those 
which we know. In the English Bible are thirty- 
nine books of the Old Testament, while in the 
Hebrew there are but twenty-four. This differ- 
ence in number was brought about in the Hebrew 
Bible by counting in each case as one book the 
two books of Kings, the two of Samuel, the twelve 
Minor Prophets, the books of Eza and Nehemiah, 
and the two of Chronicles. The Septuagint made 
the number larger, 1 and was followed in the Vul- 
gate of Jerome, and so transmitted to the English 
Bible the number and order that we now have. 
As for the order of the books in Hebrew, while it 
differed in various manuscripts, it stands in our 
Hebrew Bibles, first, in three great divisions — the 
L,aw, the Prophets, and the Sacred Writings. It 
was in this order too, that they became of recog- 
nized authority in the canon, or settled list of 
sacred books, the Law having been most anciently 
received, then the prophetical writings, and prob- 
ably at a considerably later date the remaining 
books, although, there can be no question that 
many Scriptures were used for religious purposes 
long before the list was thus made up and the 

1 Josephus fc. Ap. I., 7, 9) reckoned only twenty-two, but by an 
arbitrary division to make the number correspond with the letters of 
the Hebrew alphabet ; he names, however, no other books than those 
in the canon. 



24 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

titles to its several parts applied. This triple 
division we find recognized in the New Testament 
by frequent appeal to the Law and the Prophets, 
and less often to the Writings, which are generally 
referred to under the title, the Psalms, the first 
book of the third class. The Hebrew Bible that 
Jesus knew was arranged therefore, with minor 
variations, as follows : 

I. The Law. 

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 
Deuteronomy. 
II. The Prophets. 

The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel, Kings. 

The Latter Prophets : Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel ; and considered as one book, Ho- 
sea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 
Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, 
Zechariah, Malachi. 
III. The Writings. 

Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Song of 
Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, 
Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah as one 
book, Chronicles. 

The definiteness and security of this list of 
books was especially guaranteed in Palestine. An 
influential school of learned teachers maintained 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 25 

with strict conscience the study of the Hebrew 
text. Upon a future page we shall speak of the 
exacting safeguards with which the later repro- 
duction of copies of the sacred books was sur- 
rounded. But quite apart from the mechanical 
labor by which the transmission of the writings 
was secured, the learned and the public sentiment 
in Palestine was wholly against the change in any 
respect of the duly recognized canon. In Alex- 
andria, and in the other lands foreign to Palestine 
where the Septuagint was used, there was a laxity 
of thought and practice concerning the limits of 
inspired truth. 1 In some places certain of the 
apocryphal books were conceded a greater au- 
thority than others, and certain books that did not 
appear even in the apocryphal list were regarded 
by some teachers as of great religions, if not of 
inspired value. But in Palestine such commen- 
taries and extra-biblical works were not received. 
Not even a written translation into Aramaic of 
the acknowledged books was allowed, and it is 
probable that even in the time of Jesus there was 
a feeling which culminated later in the intense 
jealousy that did not suffer the interpreter in the 
synagogue to write and read his translation, but 
obliged him to deliver it without notes, lest the 
written version should enter into competition with 

1 Dr. Franz Buhl, " Canon and Text of the Old Testament," p. 45. 
T. & T. Clark. Also W. Sanday, " Inspiration," p. 91, seq. 



26 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

the Hebrew. If trie supposition of some writers 
is true, that an Aramaic version existed but is 
lost, it certainly was not in writing, and could 
only have been an oral repetition of the transla- 
tions of the synagogues which had fastened them- 
selves upon the minds of the common people. 
But there is no strong evidence even for this oral 
translation, and probably it did not exist as any 
definite attempt to present the whole Scripture in 
the language of the people. It can be easily seen 
how with such prejudices and watchcare there 
was no opportunity either for the loss of any books 
of the canon or for the addition of others. 

The Bible of Jesus was also the Bible of his 
apostles and of the earliest Christian church. For 
a long time' the need of no other Scriptures was 
realized. The personal presence of the apostles 
or their companions and pupils made their oral 
instruction the natural method of imparting the 
truths of the new kingdom. No Christian Jew 
yet dreamed that a new body of writings was des- 
tined to supplant the venerated covenant of Israel 
and become the supreme written authority of the 
Christian world. In fact, the old Scriptures had 
now acquired a fresh value, and the attention was 
largely directed to tracing the prophecies and 
types by which the Messiah was foretold. Preach- 
ing and teaching were for a time less directed to 
the development of doctrine, in the sense in which 



THE BIBLE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES 27 

we use the word, than to the historical memoranda 
of Christ's life and the comparison of these with 
ancient prediction. The discourses in the Acts of 
the Apostles indicate this very clearly. And it 
was only as the life of the new church was un- 
folded that occasion arose for written Epistles and 
Gospels. The consideration of this later and dis- 
tinctively Christian literature is deferred to the 
following chapter. Thus far it is seen that the 
Bible used by Jesus and the apostles was only the 
Old Testament as we have it in the Hebrew and 
in the Greek languages. 



II 

THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

r FHB Christian church inherited from Judaism 
J- the Scriptures of the Old Testament. An 
extended period, more than four hundred years, 
had elapsed since Malachi prophesied, and a very 
long time had gone since the last word of the re- 
ceived books had been written down, as probably 
in the book of Daniel. Great and stirring events 
had occurred in Palestine. Last of all, Jesus had 
lived and died and passed into the glory of his 
Father. He left his followers in possession of 
their old Bible, doubly sanctified to them by his 
own use, quotation, and authority. Its value 
was not lessened, but increased, as he had 
confirmed its truth, fulfilled its predictions of 
the Messiah, applied its teachings to his own life, 
and expounded them for his disciples. He had 
fed his soul upon its words, and had unfolded its 
spirit by his divine insight. A book of any kind 
is not merely a verbal text, but rather the thought 
that may be either adequately or inadequately ex- 
pressed by the words : a book is the meaning of it, 
and this Jesus had wrought out in his discourses 
until the Law and the Prophets had taken on a new 
28 



THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 29 

glory, and the Psalrns had become the expression 
of spiritual moods which no Jewish rabbi had yet 
seen or felt. 

But Jesus had done even more than this. He 
had shown how the revelation of the old time was 
progressive and partial and incomplete ; how 
there were yet many things to be revealed that 
even he could not tell his disciples, because they 
were not prepared for them. As in his sermon on 
the mount, and in his discourse on marriage and 
divorce, he had shown that some of the Mosaic 
laws had been given to meet only a crude state of 
society, and "for the hardness of men's hearts." 
No longer was strict retribution to be visited by 
man upon man, as in the old saying : u An eye for 
an eye and a tooth for a tooth." No more was 
family life to be easily broken, its bonds to be 
shattered at the caprice of husband or wife, as the 
law was defined by the rabbis in the time of Christ. 
A better law was now to obtain, and as Jesus an- 
nounced it, lie showed how Moses had been fet- 
tered by circumstances, and the revelation given 
through him had been adapted to the needs of that 
remoter time. The new Christianity would need 
new laws, and his Spirit was to appear in all. 
Men were to go and preach and teach. The future 
and all the world lay before his disciples. As time 
went on his apostles would be taught how to declare 
bis truth, and the Holy Spirit would lead them. 



30 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

In confirmation of this promise, one emergency 
after another was met by the illumined and inspired 
mind of the church, and a new body of writings 
grew up. It grew up exactly as the Old Testa- 
ment had come into existence, only in a much 
shorter period. Jesus had promised his inspiration 
for their future work to the apostles, and no small 
part of that work was to be, as time showed, the 
writing of historical memoranda and of letters for 
the use of the new churches and the instruction 
of Christendom at large through coming centuries. 
As occasion arose the promise of inspiration was 
verified. Again holy men spake and wrote as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And yet 
it was a very natural course by which the various 
books of the Xew Testament came into being. 
The personality of the writer was more than a mere 
channel for the flowing of the life-giving stream. 
He was not made a mere helpless machine by this 
strange inspiration from above. Xor did the Divine 
impulse over-ride the circumstances that were the 
immediate occasion of the writing-, or ignore the 
needs of the near and the few for the sake of 
making the truth applicable to the many and the 
far-away. The inspiration of the writers of the 
Old Testament had left them free in matters of 
style, modes of thought, form of composition, so 
that the characteristics of the age and of the 
author appear in every book of the thirtv-nine, 



THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 3 1 

while in some of them the compiler's hand is evi- 
dent, and has not availed to obliterate the many 
differences by which the authors themselves were 
originally distinguished. In like manner the in- 
spiration of the New Testament is, so to speak, 
natural. There is not a book of which the same 
supernatural source and natural method may not 
be seen. Indeed the course of growth and the 
general features in the composition of the New 
Testament are in most respects exactly comparable 
with those of the Old Testament, with the one 
important difference that the Christian books 
represent only a single age, and were comprised 
within a narrow limit of less than a half-century, 
while the Jewish books covered an enormous lapse 
of time and marked widely separated periods. 
Many of the Old Testament writings also have the 
character of compilations, which is not seen in the 
New Testament ; the Psalms, for example, having 
many authors, and showing conclusively the hands 
of compilers ; the books of Moses also being the 
collection of much diverse material, and such 
compositions as the book of Proverbs declaring in 
themselves their various sources. Many other im- 
portant questions of date and authorship are the 
subjects of learned conjectures ; but it is manifestly 
not the province of these pages to enter into the 
discussion of these questions. It is sufficient to 
note them, and to illustrate the remoter and 



32 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

slower growth, of the Old Testament by tracing in 
a general way that of the New Testament. 

The teaching and preaching of the apostles, 
the repetition by many others of the story of the 
divine life as they had witnessed it, must have 
created a very considerable body of Christian 
tradition before the earliest date of any of the 
writings that we possess. After a time there was 
some attempt to commit these traditions to writing, 
as St. Luke seems to intimate when he says : 
' ' Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set 
forth in order a declaration of those things which 
are most surely believed among us, even as they 
delivered them unto us, which from the beginning 
were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it 
seemed good to me also, having had perfect un- 
derstanding of all things from the very first, to 
write," etc. These words must refer to attempts 
to reduce to permanent records the oral histories 
already in circulation, but of these we have no 
remains to-day. St. Luke's Gospel is thus ex-, 
plained by himself. 

The second Gospel was written by Mark, prob- 
ably to record the substance of St. Peter's teach- 
ing with respect to the life of our Lord. St. 
Matthew wrote for the Jewish Christians espe- 
cially, as indicated by many internal characteris- 
tics of the book, and it has been supposed that 
our present first Gospel is a translation of the 



THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 33 

Aramaic or Hebrew, which Matthew may have 
employed in the original work. The writings of 
earliest date are the Epistles to the Thessalonians, 
probably about A. D. 52. Jnst as Isaiah was 
moved to prophesy in the old time, or as Ha- 
bakkuk and Malachi had "burdens" that they 
must declare, so Paul was forced to write to the 
Christians at Thessalonica concerning errors of 
faith and practice that were assailing the welfare 
of the church. His "burdens" were many, and 
letter after letter was added, as church after 
church needed his help. As time went on, other 
emergencies called for different treatment ; gen- 
eral epistles for wide circulation were needed. A 
large development of Christian doctrine arose as 
difficulties became manifest, or a partial instruc- 
tion at one time opened the way for further teach- 
ing at another. A new life was constantly un- 
folding, and a new world of thought was coining 
into being. Thus the New Testament gradually 
grew into its present volume, the product of life, 
though also the result of Divine purpose and sug- 
gestion ; much of it the unfolding of truth long 
enshrined in the Old Testament, but much of it 
an addition to the religious thought of the world, 
as it was called forth by the new life that was 
making itself felt more and more as a regener- 
ating force. 

Before the close of the first century all the 



34 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

writings now composing the New Testament were 
in the hands of the Christian church. Notwith- 
standing the long controversies concerning the 
Gospel of John and the differences of opinion 
about some of the epistles, we believe that it may 
be reaffirmed with more confidence than ever, that 
these writings all fall within the apostolic time. 
There is no reasonable doubt that such is the case. 
But, as in the case of the Old Testament, other 
writings also came into existence, and in some 
instances they were received for a time as of 
authority. The Shepherd of Hennas, for ex- 
ample, is found bound up in the same volume 
with the New Testament in one of the two oldest 
manuscripts in our possession, a full description 
of which will be given in a later chapter. The 
first epistle of Clement was read for a time in 
some churches, and is found in the Alexandrine 
manuscript, the Codex A in the British Museum. 
An epistle of Barnabas also found credence for a 
time, but later was rejected, and the internal evi- 
dence seemed conclusive against its genuineness. 
It was natural that this wavering line of inspired 
authority should be variable for a time until the 
churches could prove the new writings and bring 
them to the test of life and to the scrutiny of 
learning. It must be remembered that the sacred 
books, written at different times and places, were 
never brought together in one volume, as we have 



THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 35 

thein, until a later day. The decision as to the 
close of the canon could not be reached while the 
documents were still appearing, nor for a consid- 
erable time thereafter ; and in fact it was not until 
the middle of the fourth century that it became 
generally evident that the need of the church was 
wholly satisfied in this respect. During two hun- 
dred and fifty years no book had been produced 
that was deemed worthy to stand with the New 
Testament as we now have it, and the list was 
definitely considered as closed. 

But before we pass from the consideration of 
the growth of the Bible, it will be well to note a 
little more particularly the human forces that 
were at work to bring about this determination 
of what writings were of real apostolic origin or 
authority. It is important not to be deceived 
upon such a subject and to know whether the 
tests applied were adequate, and whether the 
judgment of the church was well founded. How 
did God guide the mind of his people and shape 
through them the new Scriptures of their faith ? 
The church to-day has a far greater ground for 
confidence in its body of sacred writings than if 
the Bible had professed to come down, one com- 
pleted volume, from flaming skies, or to have been 
discovered, like the book of Mormon, in some 
secret hiding place on earth. In fact, almost 
every circumstance that could be brought to the 



36 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

aid of the church in determining this great matter 
was present. Hostility from without was active 
in leaving no point of possible attack unassailed. 
Early disagreements within set parties against 
each other, with eyes alert for the detection of any 
imposture or wrong though honest action. It has 
been asserted that it was a credulous age and un- 
critical to the last degree. The assertion is wide 
of the mark. There were men of great brain and 
quick mind, and the public was appreciative of 
good quality in literary work. In Rome, the Au- 
gustan age was at its height when Christ was 
born, and the names of Cicero, Horace, Ovid, 
Virgil, Livy, and many others of their peers were 
borne to the farthest bounds of the Roman do- 
minion in the subsequent years, while Rome itself 
became one great academy. The pinnacle of 
Greek culture had long ago been reached, but at 
no time was the knowledge of Greek literature 
and art more widely diffused ; and even in the 
land of the Jews theaters were erected for the pro- 
duction of the plays of the Greek poets, one of them 
finding place in Jerusalem, to the great scandal of 
the people. Alexandria was an important literary 
center, especially famous for critical studies, and 
destined to grow more prominent still as the ear- 
liest centuries of our era turned the life of that 
center of learning toward Christianity and the 
discussion of its truths. Among the Jews them- 



THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 37 

selves, a large body of men trained in the Law had 
become notorious for their minute, hair-splitting, 
capricious criticism of their sacred writings, while 
conspicuous rabbis revealed a great mental ability ; 
and these Jewish scholars were so wholly domi- 
nated by love for their own Scriptures, and were 
so filled with hatred against the new sect of Chris- 
tians, that their hostility would naturally subject 
the new doctrines and the writings containing 
them to the most searching criticism. And the 
Christians themselves who came out from Judaism 
must have been met at the outset of their new 
life with difficulties such as would call for argu- 
ments like those in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
which show how loth the Jewish mind was to 
believe until convinced. If we regard the efforts 
within the church to bring their increasing 
Scriptures into a definite canon that could be 
relied upon, we find in a document discovered by 
Muratori, in A. D. 1738, and called after him the 
Muratori Fragment, a list which recognizes the 
Gospels, the Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, two 
of John, that of Jude, and the Revelation, to 
which it adds an Apocalypse of Peter, saying 
however, that "some of our body will not have 
the latter read in the church." This was in A. D. 
170. Even earlier, a heretical teacher at Rome 
in A. D. 140, Marcion, made a list of Scriptures to 
suit his own heretical views, and included in it 



38 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

ten of St. Paul's epistles and a part of St. Luke's 
Gospel. But this mutilated list excited the indig- 
nant remonstrance of the church, and her great 
writers condemned the list. At least a score of 
documents were at that time claimed as of apos- 
tolic authority. "It is probable," says Davidson, 
" that the earliest collection of the sacred books was 
this of Marcion ; but we must not forget that even 
in the Second Epistle of Peter (3 : 16) there is 
a reference to ' all the epistles of Paul ' and to 
'other Scriptures,' which may refer to a readily 
accessible collection already in the hands of the 
churches." However this may be, it is clear that 
the growth of the canon was watched carefully 
from this earliest time, and that the additions 
made in Asia Minor, in Syria, in Egypt, in 
Northern Africa, and in Rome, had a certain 
amount of local jealousy to contend with, and 
found their settled place only upon their incon- 
testable claims. About the beginning of the third 
century, the Gospels and the apostolic writings are 
referred to under the one name, Novum Testa- 
mentum, or New Testament, a title which became 
general toward the middle of that century. At 
this time the work had proceeded so far as to 
include all the books in our New Testament, 
except the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apoca- 
lypse, the second Epistle of Peter, that of Jude, 
and the second and third of John. These were 






THE BIBLE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 39 

known, quoted, and doubtless regarded as au- 
thentic and canonical by some in all countries 
where they were circulated ; but they had not yet 
corne to the undoubted authority of the rest. But 
the collection thus far made up was appealed to 
everywhere as sacred, inspired, and the standard 
of Christian faith. To this list the Hebrews and 
the Apocalypse were fully received very soon 
after the middle of the third century, and about 
the middle of the fourth century the remaining 
writings had gained full acceptance. 

Thus by long and careful trial, by the test of 
patient and learned examination, by the proof of 
their divine power in molding the lives of men, 
and by survival after numberless enmities had 
done their worst to destroy them, these later 
writings became the new sacred literature of the 
church, and without substantial change have been 
handed down to the present age. The Old Testa- 
ment remains, with all its hoary prestige, the 
divine record of God's dealings with men before 
he expressed his Word in flesh and gave Jesus to 
be the Light of the World. And taking up the 
spirit of those ancient histories and prophecies and 
songs, the New Testament adds its fourfold story 
of the life of Jesus among men, and shows how 
from that life flows forth the stream of redemption, 
that "whosoever believeth in him might not 
perish but have everlasting life." 



Ill 

THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 

IT is clear that the process which we have been 
describing must have entailed the multiplica- 
tion of copies of the books of both Testaments. 
The last New Testament autograph was written 
at least thirteen centuries and a half before print- 
ing was invented. Every document of the Jews, 
every page of the Christian Scriptures, must be 
written with great pains by the human hand. The 
workmen were fallible, and if Paul could write of 
the inspired apostles, ' ' we are men of like passions 
with yourselves, ' ' how much more must we re- 
member that the thousands of hands by which 
the very human work of transcribing was done 
were human hands, and that to have "such treas- 
ure in earthen vessels " makes only the more won- 
derful the fact that our Scriptures have come down 
to us in such safety and with such integrity as is 
indicated by the testimony of the great scholars 
whose lives have been given to the study of the 
sacred text. Regarding the writings of the Bible 
in their human aspect in the same critical way in 
which the classical works of Greece and Rome are 
treated, a difference of text is found in different 
40 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 4 1 

manuscripts. The variations in the Old Testa- 
ment for very good reasons, as will be seen later, 
are far fewer than those in the New Testament, 
but in either case it would have needed a miracle 
to preserve the mere text from any error. It is of 
great importance, therefore, that all of the old 
manuscripts of the Scriptures should be brought 
together, studied, compared, and out of them all 
such a true text be gathered as may be considered 
in all essentials and in almost every particular the 
correct original text. This is not only possible, 
but it has been done. We have at least two great 
editions of the New Testament in the original 
Greek to-day, which do not indeed preclude the 
necessity of further study, but which give us 
very little to be hoped for in the matter of accuracy 
beyond what these editions present. And for the 
Old Testament the condition of the Hebrew may 
be said to be approximately determined. 

The mere materials of which the ancient docu- 
ments are made should be considered, if our further 
treatment of them is to be wholly understood. 
" Especially the parchments " describes very well 
nearly all that are in our possession. But other 
materials had been used, and even at the begin- 
ning of our era the manuscripts were not written 
alone on skins. The age for stone and clay had 
long passed ; and yet doubtless some of the records 
now found recorded on parchment or papyrus were 



42 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

originally written on clay and stone, and it is not 
necessary to suppose that the age of writing was 
late, and that a mere oral transmission of the 
earliest beliefs prevailed until a late time. Many 
of the accounts now found in Genesis and Exodus 
have their parallels in clay and stone records, and 
when we read of the command to Moses to make 
stone tablets for the ten commandments, it is quite 
in accord with a common method of writing formal 
documents in that day. Whole libraries have 
been discovered made of clay tablets, some of them 
recording transactions in real estate and other 
matters of business as early as two thousand two 
hundred years before Christ, or two hundred years 
before Abram came out of Chaldea. The Baby- 
lonian and Egyptian monuments, the Minsean 
and Sabaean inscriptions in Southern Arabia, the 
tablets found at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, and the 
excavations at Tel el-Hesy, or the ancient Lachish, 
in Palestine, show that writing was common at an 
extremely early date. A whole town in Southern 
Palestine was called Booktown, doubtless on ac- 
count of the deposit there of records in large num- 
bers similar to the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. The 
Moabite stone elsewhere referred to, and the 
Rosetta stone, are instances of writing on stone. 
Papyrus was in use even contemporaneously with 
clay and stone, and gradually superseded them as 
a far more convenient though more perishable ma- 




P9 O 

E .2 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 43 

terial. It was a product made from the reeds that 
grew in great abundance in the Nile, and nearly 
all marshy spots. Professor Georg Bbers, in his 
Egyptian story, u The Emperor," has told how 
the reed was prepared in large factories for the 
purpose ; but we need note only the result obtained, 
an exceedingly light and smooth fabric very much 
like our paper, which indeed takes its name from 
this same old word, papyrus. After a long time 
papyrus became scarce and dear. Then the skins 
of animals, particularly of the young antelope, 
were dressed with the greatest skill until a vellum 
almost as thin and fine as paper was obtained. 
As in the case of papyrus this was cut into strips 
a few inches long, these strips were pasted together 
upon their side-edges, making one long strip some- 
times many feet in length. The ends of this strip 
were fastened to sticks around which they were 
rolled (volume), and the reader held one stick in 
each hand, rolling the vellum up as he read, the 
writing having been put upon each piece in a 
column, so that two or three columns might 
appear to the eye as the strip was unrolled from 
one hand and rolled up by the other. Soon this 
cumbersome method of making books yielded to 
the book form, as we have it, and all of the New 
Testament manuscripts now in our possession are 
books. At a much later time, the ninth century, 
a coarse paper made of cotton rags came into use, 



44 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

preceding the linen paper made in the twelfth 
centnry. 

It can be seen that fragile papyrus, or skins, 
would not be likely to survive rude or constant 
handling, and doubtless multitudes of the old 
manuscripts have perished from such natural 
causes. But vast numbers of these sacred books 
have perished through the hostility which the 
Jew and the Christian were called upon to suffer 
on account of their religion. Probably as early 
as the time of Manasseh many copies of the law 
were destroyed. When the armies of Nebuchad- 
nezzar swept over the land, and the people were 
carried into captivity, multitudes of these books 
must have perished, or been borne away to the 
far north. In the days of Antiochus Bpiphanes 
an edict called for the destruction of all the sacred 
writings, and a regular search was made once a 
month through all the houses, and if any books 
were found they were ruthlessly burned. When 
Titus captured Jerusalem, one copy of the L,-aw, 
perhaps the official copy used in the temple, was 
carried to Rome with the other trophies, but it 
has not been preserved, and doubtless it was then 
kept only as a curious specimen while others were 
destroyed. In the years A. D. 1 31-135, Bar 
Cochbar's great rebellion defied for a time the im- 
perial power of Hadrian, but was finally quenched 
in blood, and the last hope of the Jewish people 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 45 

as a nation perished ; and in this strife, as in so 
many others, Jewish scholars and their books were 
special objects of hostility, and innumerable docu- 
ments were lost. And when the Christian Script- 
ures had come into existence and shared with the 
Old Testament the reverence of the church, per- 
secution after persecution fell upon the new faith 
during the first three Christian centuries. In the 
last and fiercest persecution of all, that under 
Diocletian, from A. d. 303 to 312, it was pro- 
claimed upon Easter Day that all religious assem- 
blies should be dispersed, all Christian churches 
demolished, every copy of their Scriptures de- 
livered up and burned, and the Christians who 
should refuse to sacrifice to the gods should forfeit 
their lives and their estates. The decree shows 
how important it was deemed by the foes of the 
new religion to destroy the writings as well 
as the persons and property of the Christians. 
And though by far the larger number refused to 
give up their books, and were punished with more 
or less severity, yet there were many who dared 
not disobey, and preferred to relinquish the books. 
All who did so were at once stigmatized as tradi- 
tores, or givers-up, traitoi's, their infamy making 
all the more illustrious the fidelity of such Chris- 
tians as those of Abitina in Africa, forty-nine of 
whom were executed, among them the heroic boy 
Hilarianus. As for the Old Testament, still 



46 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

another cause accounts for the disappearance of 
multitudes of copies, for they were often destroyed 
by their possessors for the purpose of keeping 
them from either suffering- or doing: harm. It 
was better to destroy a sacred but useless roll 
altogether, than to allow it to come into hands 
that would pollute it, or to run the risk of the 
perpetuation of its faults in copies that might be 
made from it. Very slight defects were enough 
to vitiate a synagogue roll. Three errors of a 
scribe upon a single sheet, the blurring of letters 
brought about by the reverent kissing of the 
opening and closing words of the portion to be 
read, any mutilation of the text by ordinary wear, 
and many other causes, condemned a document. 
Generally such rolls were buried in a place 
selected for the purpose near the synagogue and 
called the Gheniza. Indeed, it may be that a 
wholesale destruction of early copies of the Old 
Testament took place upon the final establish- 
ment of an authoritative text, all copies not agree- 
ing with it being put out of existence, as Othman 
destroyed all copies of the Koran that diverged in 
the slightest degree from the standard copy made 
in his time. It is these causes that explain the 
strange fact that we have no copies of the Hebrew 
Old Testament of an earlier date than the tenth 
century of our era. Many New Testament manu- 
scripts are in existence from a time earlier than 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 47 

that ; but not one of the Hebrew Bible, except 
the copy of the law at Nablous, the ancient 
Shechem, which has been believed to be of the 
third century. It is chiefly due to the possession 
of Hebrew copies by Gentiles, that the manu- 
scripts of the Old Testament now available have 
come into our hands. 

But while we have comparatively few of these 
Old Testament scrolls, and all of a late date, they 
have in general a very uniform text. As we 
have seen, this uniformity does not indicate their 
close connection with one original or the correct 
transmission of the earliest text. On the con- 
trary, great and many vicissitudes intervened, as 
a rapid sketch of the literary history of the people 
will show. 

The original Law delivered on Sinai was written 
on stones, and we know from the Bible itself that 
these were broken and replaced by new tablets, 
which were placed in the ark (Deut. 10 : 1-5). But 
even before Sinai was reached Moses had been 
commanded to write an account of the battle with 
Amalek : " Write this for a memorial in a book, 
and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua" (Exod. 
17 : 14). Before he died, " Moses wrote this law," 
doubtless some important part of the Pentateuch, 
although it is hard to determine now just how 
much of it, and gave it to the priests, the sons of 
Levi, to be read at the feast of Tabernacles at the 



48 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

end of every seven years (Deut. 31 : 10), and to be 
laid during the intervals by the side of the ark as 
a testimony to Israel. Additions were made by 
Joshua to this sacred library (Josh. 24 : 26), and 
at a later period "Samuel told the people the 
manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in the book, 
and laid it up before the Lord." David's Psalms 
and others may then have found place. So far the 
story is of the first production of these writings, 
and of the extreme reverence with which they 
were regarded and which must have protected 
them from any violation. But then comes an in- 
timation of what may have been the first copies. 
It became the custom for every new king upon his 
accession to make a copy of the Law to be kept 
with him (Deut. 17 : 18) for his personal use. Thus 
the number of copies grew, and probably the more 
rapidly as the earlier prophets arose, and schools 
of the prophets were founded, which must have 
required the use of the sacred books. All this 
copying would be likely to have the opposite ten- 
dency from an accurate transmission of the text. 
It may be safe to say that no copy could have 
been absolutely free from error. Moreover, we 
find a growing disrespect for the Law and the 
religion of Israel, and the nation lapsed into 
idolatry. The sacred rolls would be less securely 
guarded and less often read. Possibly the very 
obscurity in which they would lie during such a 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 49 

period was a safeguard to tliern. But then we 
read of a great religious revival when Hezekiah 
came to the throne. The whole nation was 
aroused. The long-closed temple was opened 
and the service again instituted, and errors cor- 
rected according to what was written (2 Chron. 
30 : 18), and the priests and Levites once more 
gave themselves to the study of the law of the 
Lord (2 Chron. 31 : 4), resulting in further 
transcription of the writings, as we know from 
the book of Proverbs (25 : 1). But another 
revulsion came : Hezekiah's son and grandson 
knew not Jehovah, and holy living lapsed, and 
once more the Law was lost to view, until Josiah 
came as a boy to the throne. When he had been 
ten years in power, and had tried to re-establish 
the true religion, suddenly word was brought to 
him that Hilkiah the priest had found the book 
of the law of the Lord given by the hand of 
Moses (2 Chron. 34 : 14). This was about the 
year b. c. 621. In solemn convocation this old 
document thus newly found was read to the 
people, and the land was prospered. But again a 
relapse into sin came ; as a consequence, the 
Egyptians first and then the Babylonians swept 
over the country ; the temple was despoiled, and 
Nebuchadnezzar carried its treasures to Babylon. 
Did the sacred rolls go with them ? If they did not, 
probably they perished in the flames at a later 



50 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

day, when the house of the Lord was burned in 
the reign of Zedekiah 1 (2 Chron. 36 : 19). How- 
ever this may be, it is probable that authoritative 
copies were now in the possession of the people, 
some of which may have remained in the land, 
while others, if only a few, were preserved by 
some of the more pious and favored of the 
captives. 

We have traced this history hastily to show that 
the vicissitudes of the time were not favorable 
either to the exact reproduction of the original text 
in copies, or to the preservation of the volumes 
themselves. But the deportation of the people 
and the captivity in Babylon, like so many 
apparent misfortunes, was a blessing in disguise. 
A truer spirituality was fostered and a larger op- 
portunity given for the study of such ancient 
copies of their law as were remaining. It is not 
ours to trace the story of the exile, but only to 
note that Babylon became the home of all the 
literary cultivation of the Jews at this time, as at 
a later period Alexandria was the center of Jewish 
learning, while later still, after the fourth century 
of the Christian era, the Jewish center of learning 
returned again to Babylon. It is not necessary for 
us to suppose, as the Jewish legend does, that the 
Scriptures burned in the temple at the close of 

1 See the fourth book of Ezra for the legend concerning this 
conjecture. 






THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 5 1 

Zedekiah's reign were miraculously restored by 
Ezra in Babylon, for a more natural course may 
have brought about the same end, if this learned 
and pious and zealous man deemed it his first duty 
to search out the copies among the people, and by 
diligent comparison write a new copy better than 
any or all of them. However this may be, we find 
him on the return of the exiles with such a copy 
in his hands, and it becomes at once the standard 
Scripture of the restored nation. From this 
moment new and abundant means for the multi- 
plication of the records arose. A guild of scribes 
came into existence, the beginning of that com- 
pact body of learned men which we meet so often 
in the Gospels. Previously the Scriptures had 
been chiefly the concern of the priests, and Ezra 
himself was both a priest and a scribe. But now 
arose a new demand for the scientific study of the 
Law, and the exposition of it became an indepen- 
dent business. A new profession gradually arose, 
and non-priestly Israelites more and more entered 
into it. 

This class of scholars was also favored by the 
rise of synagogues, in which the teaching of the 
Law became the central and principal object. In 
the temple the main thing was sacrificial worship. 
In the synagogue the main thing was instruction, 
and no one can read the New Testament without 
seeing that the natural growth of the Christian 



52 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

church was not from an origin in the temple but 
rather from the synagogues, so that the new 
worship became not so much ritual as a worship 
having preaching for its central point. Philo 
called the synagogues " houses of instruction," in 
which " the native philosophy was studied and 
every kind of virtue taught." According to tra- 
dition, which has but few probabilities in its 
favor, 1 the solemn covenant, signed as recorded in 
the tenth chapter of Nehemiah, was the beginning 
of the Great Synagogue, a great central body of 
men chosen of God for the study of the Law. 
Ezra was its president, and Daniel, Haggai, 
Malachi, and others of the biblical prophets, were 
from time to time members of it. From this grew 
the guild of the scribes and from the earliest 
synagogues the establishment of synagogues 
throughout all the world. There can be no doubt, 
whatever we may think of the story of the Great 
Synagogue, that during the period from Ezra to 
the beginning of our era, there was an intense 
literary activity, and that the Old Testament 
gradually came to its final shape ; the text re- 
ceived virtually its present form in all the earliest 
written books, and the later writings were added. 
And while the great multiplication of copies must 
have tended to the production also of clerical 
errors, yet the critical attention of the scribes 

1 Biihl on the " Canon and Text of the Old Testament," p. 34. 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 53 

must also have tended to a comparison of manu- 
scripts, as in later days, and the eradication of 
false readings. We know that when our Lord 
appeared the Old Testament was a completed and 
wonderfully revered and guarded book. 
x After the time of Jesus, a new dispersion of the 
Jews, destined to last even to our own time, was 
brought about by the destruction of Jerusalem, in 
A. D. 70. The temple was once more gone, and 
instead of one great center for their religious life 
many centers arose, and some of these became of 
great importance. Tiberias, more than all, be- 
came the home of Jewish learning, and from this 
point Jewish scholars went out in great numbers. 
The whole reverence of the nation gathered 
around the Scriptures, which were now their hope 
for the future as well as their record of a glorious 
past. The scribes became of more importance 
than ever. The priests had become somewhat 
looser in their convictions than formerly, and 
many of them yielded to the contagion for world- 
culture as the functions of their sacred offices 
became more and more impossible. They de- 
voted themselves to the Greek literature, so widely 
affected at the time, but the scribes would have 
none of it. Rabbi Ishmael was once asked when 
the Greek wisdom might be studied, and he 
answered : "At some time which is neither day 
nor night, for the book of the Law says : ' Day 



54 ™E PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

and night thou shalt meditate therein. ' " In addi- 
tion to the reproduction of manuscripts and their 
constant study, new works were written, making 
no pretention to sacredness, but having the charac- 
ter of commentaries, comprising the traditional 
oral explanations of the L,aw, and later interpre- 
tations in writing, the former called the Mishna 
and the latter Gemara, and these when brought 
together were called the Talmud, or the Teach- 
ing. While this additional literature was grow- 
ing, the natural tendency of such study was to 
increase yet further the reverence with which the 
sacred books themselves were held, and from 
various sources we are sure that they suffered no 
material corruption. Though no document of 
this early age has come down to us, a comparison 
of translations and of quotations shows that the 
text was substantially that which we have now. 
Moreover, while all this was doing, a great many 
discussions had arisen and decisions been reached 
as to disputed points, matters of reading as well 
as interpretation, and these had come to such 
volume as to make their secure transmission by 
oral means alone almost impossible. These there- 
fore were also reduced to writing, and a select 
party of the scribes was devoted to this work. 
As the Mishna and Gemara together were called 
the Talmud, or the Teaching, this new collec- 
tion of writings was called the Massorah, or the 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 55 

Traditions, and the scribes under whom it was 
formed were called Massoretes. This body of 
learned men devoted itself to the most minute 
study of the Scriptures in the application of the 
older laws and the addition of many others ; but 
most of all, the influence of the Massoretes was 
felt in the introduction of written vowels, by 
which the pronunciation and the meaning of the 
original Hebrew was fixed. For up to this time 
the original Hebrew as a written language was a 
language of consonants only ; and coming to this 
point in our description we must pause a moment 
to consider the text itself, as it would appear to 
the eye of a reader. 

The very earliest Scriptures were written in a 
form that differs considerably from the appearance 
of a page in our Hebrew Bible of to-day. The 
ancient Phoenician character was used, differing 
in many respects from the later square character, 
as will be seen from the following examples : 

Phoenician : Z ? 21 y ^ <J 1 <^ <£ 

Later Hebrew ; s ft y } D 1 ) D K 

Of the first specimen there are but few examples 
left ; but in recent years some of these have been 
discovered. In 1868, at Dibon, in Moab, east of 
the Dead Sea, a large stone was discovered bearing 
an inscription of Mesha, the king of Moab men- 
tioned in 2 Kings 3 : 4. Undoubtedly this in- 



56 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

scription is as early as the ninth century before 
Christ, and it is the oldest specimen of the ancient 
Hebrew, or more properly, of the ancestral Phoe- 
nician stock. Unfortunately the stone was broken 
into many fragments by the Arabs, wheu they 
realized that it was of great value, as was shown 
by the large offers made for it by a French savant 
then living in Jerusalem. Either from a feeling 
of superstition, or thinking that more money 
might be gotten by selling the stone piecemeal, 
they built a fire under it, and when it was very hot 
dashed cold water on it, thus shattering it. The 
smaller pieces were appropriated as amulets, and 
the larger guarded as of peculiar sanctity. By 
perseverance and a large outlay of money, how- 
ever, most of the pieces were finally obtained, the 
larger number by France, while a few pieces found 
their way to England ; but with a regard for the 
true interests of scientific knowledge that was 
most praiseworthy, the British Museum yielded its 
fragments to the Louvre, and the restored stone is 
now in the possession of that national treasure- 
house. Another important discovery was made 
in Jerusalem in 1880 upon the wall of the conduit 
which opens into the pool of Siloam. A boy was 
wading in the pool and made his way with a 
lighted candle into the dark mouth of the tunnel, 
when he observed what appeared to be characters 
engraved on the rock. He at once reported his 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 57 

discovery as of possible value, and indeed it was 
found to be of the time of Hezekiah, and to throw 
much light upon the construction of the tunnel 
and the condition of the city at the time. This 
specimen is next in antiquity to the Moabite stone, 
and shows also the old but later Phoenician form 
of the letters out of which the Hebrew grew. A 
few other examples of such writing exist on seals 
and coins, and a modified form of it is seen in the 
Samaritan Pentateuch. 

The age succeeding Ezra witnessed a change 
of the written character into what is called the 
square letter, as seen in the second example in our 
illustration. The change was doubtless very 
gradual, but was assigned by the later Jews to 
Ezra himself, as it w T as their custom to put every- 
thing down to Ezra that could not well be attrib- 
ted to Moses. But we know that the change was 
gradual, for we find it still in progress as late as 
the fourth century before Christ, and somewhat 
earlier upon monuments which show an Egyptian- 
Aramaic character, as well as upon coins and a 
fragment of papyrus in the British Museum. 1 
Moreover, the Samaritans did not have their 
Pentateuch written in the old character until at 
least a half century after Ezra. But however 
gradually the change was effected, it may have 

1 Driver: " Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel," 
xvii., seq. 



58 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

begun indeed with the great Ezra, and progressed 
until it was completed at a date considerably 
before our era, for we are sure that the written 
Hebrew, with which Jesus was conversant and 
which was familiar to the men of his time, must 
have had the characters with which we are 
familiar. He refers to the u jot and the tittle," 
the yodth, the very smallest letter, which, however, 
in the ancient form was one of the largest, as our 
example shows ; and the tittle, the little crook 
found in many letters, such as the "L," "b," in 
the later writing, which afforded no trace of such 
a minute terminal in the older form. 

Then came the Massoretes, as we have said. 
Let us take an example of Hebrew in the square 
character and translate it into English, and we 
shall understand what the Massoretes did in the 
addition of the vowels. The Hebrew is read from 
right to left, but the example in English is printed 
in the usual way, and we take a passage that with 
the consonants alone might be read in two ways 
— i Kings 17 : 6 : 

NDTHRVNS BRGHT THM BRD NDFLSH NTHMRNNG 

a eae on oi ea a ei eoi 

Without the vowels written beneath this would 
hardly be intelligible, especially as the conjunc- 
tions and prepositions are joined closely with the 
following words. But with the vowels we read 
easily : " And the ravens brought to him bread 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 59 

and flesh in the morning." But now if we re- 
member that the letter u V " in English is cognate 
with "B," and if we supply other possible vowels, 
we can read : 

NDTHRVNS BRGHT THM BRD NDFLSH NTHMRNNG 

a eaaia ou oiaia ei eoi 

" And the Arabians brought to him a bird and 
flesh in the morning." In fact, in the original 
Hebrew, the consonants for the word ravens and 
those for the word Arabians are exactly the same, 
not needing even the slight change of pronuncia- 
tion indicated in English by the difference be- 
tween "B" and " V." In the Hebrew, however, 
the word bread could not be mistaken for the 
word bird, as we have supposed in the English ; 
but the Hebrew consonants for bread might be 
supplied with vowels to make it read war, and so, 
if the context allowed it, our words might be 
translated: "And the Arabians brought to him 
war in the morning." In most instances there 
could be 110 mistake made from the absence of 
the written vowels, for the sense of the whole 
passage would determine the right word ; but in 
many cases there might be a difference, and in 
fact, the passage that we have taken as an ex- 
ample is preferred by some as reading: "The 
Arabians brought to him flesh," though it seems 
to us as if the older and traditional reading 
"ravens'' is preferable, particularly as it has 



6o THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

always been so understood by the Jews them- 
selves. Another passage of similar nature is 
actually translated in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
(n : 21), "Jacob worshipped, leaning- upon the 
top of his staff," following the Septuagint, which 
so understood the word in the original (Gen. 47 : 
31), "And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's 
head ' ' ; the vowels were wanting, and the Jews 
supplied them to mean bed, while the Septuagint 
supplied them for staff. It is true that the Jew 
would not find the great difficulty in reading his 
text without the vowel points that we should find 
in English, were all the vowels abolished ; but we 
can have some idea of the aid given by the intro- 
duction of these signs, and of the tendency they 
would have to fix the meaning in doubtful cases. 
But this was not the only service to the text 
rendered by the Massoretes. They supplied also 
minute signs, by which the emphasis upon certain 
words was expressed, and they introduced punc- 
tuation. Thus the sentences were not only easily 
determined, but even the tones in which the 
reader should chant the passage. They noted 
also the number of times which certain words 
occurred, and marked it in footnotes, and often by 
great care set passages over against each other by 
means of signs of reference, so that each passage 
received help from the other. They counted the 
verses in each book, the words, the letters, and 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 6l 

noted the middle verse, word, and letter, and in 
many ways that seem to us entirely superfluous, 
made themselves acquainted with the text. We 
cannot understand of what possible value it could 
be to know that the first letter of the alphabet 
occurs (in the Hebrew) forty-two thousand three 
hundred and seventy-seven times ; but they knew 
it, and much else of the same sort. But we can 
see that this close knowledge of the Scriptures 
was an index of their unbounded reverence for 
them and a safeguard against any alterations. 

The rules for the copyist were exacting in the 
extreme. The Law must be transcribed from 
manuscripts of approved character only. The 
material of the rolls must be the skins of clean 
animals only, prepared for the express purpose by 
a Jew, and fastened with strings of the same ma- 
terial. Every skin must have a certain number 
of columns of a fixed length and breadth, com- 
prising a given number of lines and words. An 
entire roll must be ruled with regular lines, and 
if more than three words are written without a 
line, the whole manuscript must be rejected. 
Black ink alone can be used, and it must be made 
according to a particular recipe. Soot, charcoal, 
and honey are mixed into a paste, which is al- 
lowed to harden ; this is then dissolved in water, 
with an infusion of galls before using. The 
writer must never trust to memory. He is to look 

F 



02 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

at the original before writing each word, and 
every word must be orally pronounced. Between 
all books three lines must be left. The fifth book 
of Moses must end exactly with the line. The 
transcriber must always be in full Jewish costume 
when at work. As often as the name of God ap- 
pears he must purify himself and wash the whole 
body, and his pen must not be dipped into the ink 
immediately before writing the name, but it must 
be washed, and then the word preceding the name 
must be written with sufficient ink in the pen so 
that at least the letter immediately before the 
sacred name shall be written with the same ink 
as the name itself. While writing the name, his 
devotion must be such that even if a king ad- 
dresses him he must take no notice till the task is 
done. Whether a mistake in copying the name 
of the Deity made a roll unfit for use in the 
synagogue was a matter of dispute among the 
Jews. The lack or redundance of a single letter, 
the writing of prose as verse, or of verse as prose, 
or two letters touching each other, spoiled a manu- 
script. When a copy was completed, it was ex- 
amined and corrected within thirty days, in order 
to determine whether it was to be approved or 
rejected. Such rules as these enumerated in the 
tract Sopherim, a late addition to the Babylonian 
Talmud, show the views with which the task 
of the scribe was then regarded. And although 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 63 

it is not likely that so many regulations hedged 
the way against errors at an earlier period, yet 
probably the exactions were many, even at the 
beginning of our era. 

Notwithstanding this extreme reverence for 
their Bibles, it was thought necessary in some 
cases to suggest a correction of the text. There 
are some words, for example, which it was not 
thought quite proper to read aloud in public ; or 
some . word was believed to be incorrect ; or 
a case of wrong spelling occurs ; or there are 
words whose last letter belongs to the following 
word ; or two words have been run together as 
one. But whatever these mistakes were, they 
must not be changed in the text itself. The 
reader had to pronounce a different word from 
what was written, or otherwise make the correc- 
tion in speech to which he was prompted by certain 
notes placed in the margin. These notes were 
called Keri, meaning "read," while the word 
actually written in the text was distinguished by 
the name Kethib, meaning " written. " Thus in 
practice if the copyists found a wrong word in 
their original they wrote it, that is, the consonants 
only, with an asterisk over them ; then they put 
under these consonants the vowels of what they 
believed to be the right word, and wrote the 
consonants of the right word in the margin. This 
made the word in the text absurd, and the atten- 



64 THE PARCHMENTS OK THE FAITH 

tion was diverted to the margin, where the correct 
consonants for the vowels in the text were found. 
If a word was to be wholly omitted in reading it 
was left unpointed, and the note written but not 
read was put in the margin ; while, on the other 
hand, if a word was to be supplied its vowels 
were inserted in the text and its letters placed in 
the margin with the words read but not written. 

In such work as this the Massoretes labored for 
centuries, until at least eight hundred years after 
Christ. Their toil was invaluable for the student 
of the Bible, and to them we owe very largely 
both the preservation and the exposition of the 
original text. In their labors we find the explana- 
tion of the strange fact that in all existing Hebrew 
manuscripts the text is almost the same, word for 
word, so that it may be said that all copies of the 
Old Testament show a greater unanimity than 
the copies of any other ancient book, not ex- 
cepting even the New Testament. 

We have seen that the toil of modern scholars 
has given us a Greek New Testament upon whose 
text we may safely rely. While it cannot be said 
that the text of the Old Testament is as correct 
and secure, notwithstanding the agreement of ex- 
tant manuscripts, yet we know that out of the old 
Hebrew times the Scripture has come to us with 
all substantial correctness. The Old Testament 
originals so far away in antiquity, the early vicis- 









THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 65 

situdes of their transmission through copies, the 
very late date of all extant manuscripts, the de- 
fective testimony of secondary witnesses like the 
translations, the as yet unsettled questions concern- 
ing the Septuagint are sufficient explanations of 
the more incomplete results of Old Testament 
criticism. But such conclusions have been at- 
tained as to leave us no reasonable doubt as to the 
revealed truth of the old dispensation, and the Old 
Testament unites with the later Covenant to point 
us infallibly to the way of eternal life. Special 
passages may need the alteration of a word or a 
phrase. Perhaps Jacob leaned upon the head of 
his bed, perhaps upon the head of his staff; 
but the great facts and the great truths of 
Jacob's life are ours beyond alteration. The 
Bible is secure. It is a word tried by the fires of 
the most exacting critical scholarship after having 
been put to the test of actual living. It was found 
by the ancient Israel to be from God ; it was 
proved by the later church to have God's Spirit 
in it, as it shaped and sustained the spiritual life 
of his people. It is to-day and ever will be the 
fountain of truth to satisfy the thirst of the soul. 



IV. 

THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS (Continued) 

'T^HK Hebrew manuscripts are divided into two 
=*• classes, according to their form, the syna- 
gogue rolls and the private copies. The former, 
as the name indicates, are all in the form of rolls, 
made of parchment, and written with the care 
that we have indicated as prescribed in the tract 
Sopherim. The text in these rolls has no vowels 
or accents, and the divisions of the text are want- 
ing. These manuscripts were made for one special 
purpose, and were never, sold. Those found in the 
possession of Christians are supposed to be such 
as were rejected by the synagogues on account of 
some slight fault which vitiated them for public 
use. The private manuscripts are in the form of 
books, written on either vellum or paper, and are 
of various sizes. The text is in black ink with 
vowel points added, often by a second writer and 
in ink of a different shade. The upper and lower 
margins of these books contain Massoretic notes, 
and somet mes additional comments. Sections, 
verses, and other distinguishing traits are found. 
Sometimes a Targum, or interpretation in Chaldee, 
is written in alternate verses or parallel columns, 
66 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 67 

and sometimes this translation occupies the mar- 
gins of the pages. 

Another classification of Hebrew manuscripts is 
made according to the character of the letters. 
The Samaritan Pentateuch, which is to all intents 
a Hebrew document, though not recognized by 
the Jews and written in the archaic form of the 
Hebrew character, stands alone. But many other 
manuscripts can be recognized at once as similar, 
and belonging to certain localities. The Spanish 
documents have the writing upright, regular, 
square, simple, and elegant. The German text is 
a little inclined, sharp-pointed, crooked, intricate, 
and comparatively inelegant. The Italian manu- 
scripts occupy a sort of middle ground between 
the Spanish and the German in these respects. 
The Spanish and German differ from each other 
in the arrangement of the books, and several other 
divergencies occur. The Oriental copies are gen- 
erally similar to the Spanish and are assigned to 
the same class, while the French are generally 
placed with the Italian. 

The total number of Hebrew manuscripts is 
very large ; over two thousand are well known. 
But it should be remembered that the great part 
of these documents contain only a portion of the 
Old Testament. The book of Esther has the 
largest number of copies ; the books of Ezra and 
Nehemiah the smallest number. Owing to the 



68 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

wide dispersion of the Jews, these documents come 
to us from all lands. If we could present a large 
number of illustrations of them, they would be 
seen to be of the most varied character, from the 
worn and tattered rolls to the almost fresh and 
very ornate volumes. But a brief description of 
a few examples must suffice, as our space must be 
given chiefly to the more important documents of 
the New Testament and their wonderful history. 

The Samaritan Pentateuch has been said to be 
in all essentials a Hebrew manuscript, although 
it is written in the ancient Phoenician Hebrew, 
and differs in many important respects from the 
documents recognized as authoritative by the 
Jews. An approximate specimen of its text has 
been given in our illustration (page 55). It will 
be noticed that the letters are very rudely shaped, 
and to the unskilled eye appear to be almost a dis- 
tinct character, having no affinity with the beau- 
tiful square letters of the other example. This 
copy of the Pentateuch is the only Bible that the 
Samaritans recognize, and it is of importance in 
the history of the text of the Old Testament, 
though it holds but an inferior place in textual 
value. 

Omri, the sixth king of Israel, founded the city 
of Samaria, about B. c. 900. His residence at 
Tirzah had been burned, its position had been 
proved too easily assailable in war, and with a 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 69 

sagacity which has been declared comparable with 
that of Constantine the Great in founding Con- 
stantinople, Omri selected the summit of the hill 
Shomeron for the capital of his kingdom. It was 
a place of great natural strength, and by its de- 
feats and desolations, no less than by its successful 
resistance to its foes, the city has often proved its 
military and political importance. 

In course of time, the ten tribes of Israel inhab- 
iting the district of which Omri's capital was the 
center, as well as the more northern section of 
Palestine, were carried away into a captivity in 
Assyria. In the second book of Kings, 17 : 24, 
we read that other nations were placed in the 
cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel, — 
" men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from 
Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim. . . 
And so it was, at the beginning of their dwelling 
there, that they feared not the Lord ; therefore 
the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some 
of them." The colonists complained to the king 
who had deported them thither, and he com- 
manded that one of the priests who had been 
carried away from Samaria should be sent back 
to teach the colonists "the manner of the God 
of the land." The result was a strange mixture 
of religions, well expressed by the words of the 
Bible : "So they feared the Lord and served their 
These then, were the New Samari- 



JO THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

tans, as we may call them, men not originally of 
the Jewish race, but from the far Bast. Doubt- 
less not all the New Samaritans were of unmixed 
foreign blood, for some of the original inhabitants 
may have remained, intermarried with the 
strangers, and thus perpetuated a strain of the 
Hebrew lineage in the later time. But essentially 
even these were foreigners, and the Samaritans 
were always considered as aliens by the Jews. 

When the tribe of Judah returned from captivity 
and sought to rebuild Jerusalem, these Samaritans 
desired to take part in the work and share in the 
privileges of the national worship. It is an evi- 
dence that they had by this time become more at 
home in the Jewish faith than they were at first. 
But the acute and strict Ezra refused to have any- 
thing to do with them. They were a corrupt 
people, and would only bring contamination into 
the Jewish State. This repulse emphasized the 
separation, and the Samaritans threw off every 
cloak of friendship, and the long and implacable 
hostility between the two peoples began. But the 
stern rejection by Ezra may have been beneficial 
in a religious view, for as the national hostility 
grew the Samaritans seem to have rejected idolatry 
more and more, and to have sought an approach 
to purity in the religion of Jehovah. About b. c. 
419, a romance in real life led to an important 
crisis in the religion of Samaria. A young Jew, 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS J I 

named Manasseh, a brother of the Jewish high 
priest, more faithful to his wife than many of his 
fellow-Jews were to theirs, refused to put her away 
because she was the daughter of a foreigner, San- 
ballat, when the elders in Jerusalem became 
uneasy about his sharing the high priest's office 
while entangled with such an alliance. Had not 
Ezra required the repudiation of all " strange 
wives " ? Manasseh refused to comply, and fled 
to Samaria. 1 The Persian king was petitioned to 
allow the erection of a temple on Mount Gerizim, 
Manasseh became the high priest there, and from 
him, says the tradition, the Samaritans received a 
copy of the L,aw. This Pentateuch was really 
only a copy of the commonly received Hebrew 
text altered for the new exigencies " by impudent 
assertion and falsification," as Edersheim says. 
This book thus became the sole authority in the 
Samaritan religion. No other books of the Hebrew 
canon were ever admitted in Samaria. Of course 
the Samaritans' version of their own history and 
the origin of their sacred books differs considerably 
from that which we have given ; but it is colored 
by the necessities of their case and is readily 
proved unreliable. 

The temple upon Mount Gerizim fell into ruins 
long ago, and the religion of the Samaritans has 
almost disappeared from the face of the earth. In 

1 Josephus, " Antiq.," xi., 8. 



J2 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

1874, only one hundred and thirty-five persons re- 
mained in the little village of Nablous, upon the 
site of the ancient Shechem, to carry on the 
ancient rites, so far as these are possible under 
such altered conditions. Their only synagogue 
is a little unadorned building in the most thickly 
settled portion of the town, and here in a veiled 
recess are kept three ancient copies of the Law, one 
of which is the famous scroll for which is claimed 
the highest antiquity and supreme authority. 
This celebrated scroll is written on the hair-side 
of fine ramskins about twenty-five by fifteen inches 
in size. The skins are much worn and stained, 
and holes appear in many places. The text is 
written in gold, which still preserves its lustre, 
and the manuscript must have been very magnifi- 
cent when new. It is kept in a cylindrical silvered 
case, opening on two sets of hinges. The outside 
of the case is richly embossed, and is pictured with 
the tabernacle of the wilderness, the ark of the 
covenant, altars, candlesticks, and other sacred 
implements. The case is declared to be Venetian, 
of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The sacred 
roll is exhibited to the congregation with appro- 
priate ceremonies only once a year, on the Day 
of Atonement, and the people reverently kiss 
that part which bears the Aaronic blessings — to 
the detriment of the blessings. When restored to 
its case, the whole is wrapped in a gorgeous crim- 






THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 73 

son satin cover, embroidered in gold. The Sa- 
maritans themselves claim that this precious relic 
was written by Abisha, a great-grandson of Aaron, 
and bears the inscription : " I, Abisha, son of 
Phinehas, son of Hleazar, son of Aaron, the priest, 
upon whom be the grace of Jehovah ! to his honor 
have I written this holy law at the entrance of the 
tabernacle of testimony on the Mount Gerizim, 
Beth-El, in the thirteenth year of the taking of 
the land of Canaan and all its boundaries around 
it by the children of Israel. I praise Jehovah ! " 
The completeness of the Samaritan claims in this 
inscription is enough to arouse suspicion, for it 
not only declares the antiquity of the document, 
but also of the place of worship on Mount Gerizim. 
As a matter of fact, the mere existence of the in- 
scription is more than doubtful, as the assertion 
of the Samaritans finds no confirmation from 
European research, except upon the dubious evi- 
dence afforded by a single traveler. It would be 
impossible to believe in such antiquity for the 
document, and it can hardly be assigned a date 
so early as the third century of our era. 

The existence of this ancient copy of the law 
was for a long time unknown. Scholars had been 
perplexed by references in the works of Origen, 
Jerome, and others, to the Hebrew according to 
the Samaritans, as differing somewhat from the 
Hebrew according to the Jews. The oblivion of 



74 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

fifteen centuries covered trie Samaritan text, and 
it began to be considered a fiction, and various 
hypotheses were assumed to explain the allusions 
of the Fathers. But at last, in 1616, Pietro della 
Valle, a man learned in the Oriental languages, 
bought a copy of the Pentateuch from the Samari- 
tans of Damascus. This copy was purchased in 
the name of the ambassador of France to Con- 
stantinople, and he gave it, in 1623, to the Library 
of the Oratory, in Paris. European interest was 
at once excited, and the manuscript was subjected 
to the most earnest scrutiny. Several other copies 
were soon discovered, and in 1630, Archbishop 
Ussher possessed six, and in 1790, a printed edi- 
tion was prepared. There are now sixteen manu- 
scripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch in the libra- 
ries of Europe. 

But now what is the value of this ancient roll 
in determining the text of our Bible ? At first it 
was supposed that it was of the greatest import- 
ance, on account of its age and the belief that it 
represented an original of far greater antiquity 
than any from which later copies were made. But 
gradually this belief was modified, and at last 
Gesenius thoroughly studied it and exposed so 
many weaknesses that it has never been considered 
an authority since that time. He showed its errors 
to consist chiefly of three sorts : first, grammatical 
blunders ; second, changes to explain passages 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 75 

that were obscure ; and third, bold corruptions for 
the sake of supporting the peculiar Samaritan 
views and usages. For these purposes history was 
deliberately falsified and teachings were twisted 
from their manifest meaning. And yet all these 
corruptions did not make the manuscript useless. 
It was found that its text was substantially that 
of the Massoretes, and just because the Samaritan 
text had been isolated for nearly two thousand 
years, and kept by intense hatred from any possi- 
ble contact with the Jewish text, its testimony to 
the substantial integrity of the latter is exceedingly 
strong, indicating a common origin for both. 

Again, it appears that certain of the translations 
of the Old Testament which are yet to be consid- 
ered by us, the Septuagint, the Syriac, the Vulgate, 
of which we have manuscripts of far earlier date 
than of any Hebrew text, agree with certain read- 
ings of the Samaritan manuscripts, and thus seem 
to indicate a partial corruption of the received He- 
brew text. In other ways, also, the Samaritan 
Pentateuch is useful to the textual critic, but we 
may not enter further into the details. But before 
we turn to other documents, we may note that this 
ancient scroll is the most interesting relic of the 
hostility which was so evident in our Saviour's time 
between the Jew and the Samaritan. And it is a 
proof of the power that has swept away all the old 
barriers between men, and borne onward the great 



76 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

work of the world's regeneration beyond all such 
petty restraints as might be erected by either Jew 
or Gentile. The time has come when the true 
worship of the Father is aptly symbolized by the 
freedom and the vast multiplication of the Script- 
ures themselves. Now we depend not upon any 
copy of the law kept either in Jerusalem or 
Gerizim ; but with the printed Bible circulated 
all over the world, and with Hebrew and Samaritan 
manuscripts testifying to its truth, the hour has 
fully come, indeed, when men shall worship the 
Father everywhere in spirit and in truth. 

Of Hebrew manuscripts, strictly so called, sev- 
eral may be mentioned as of great value, and 
some of them have interesting histories. One 
especially, that is no longer in existence, was very 
famous, the subject of some adventure and much 
romance. It was believed by some to have been 
in the possession of Ezra himself, while others 
have thought it to be one of the three famous 
copies found in the court of the temple after the 
capture of Jerusalem by Titus, and sent to Rome 
among the spoils of war. But both of these 
surmises are unworthy of credit. We know that 
the roll was in the possession of the Jews in 
Toledo, Spain ; and that in A. d. 1367, when the 
city was taken by Edward, the Black Prince, it 
fell into the hands of the conquerors. But they 
preferred its value in money, and allowed the 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS yj 

Jews to redeem it at a large price, and it returned 
to the care of the synagogue until it perished in 
the flames when the synagogue was burned. The 
document was of such sanctity that manuscripts 
from all parts of the world were sent to be tested 
by its text, and some codices are in our possession 
which are certified as having been compared at 
least with other manuscripts which had been 
verified by the Codex Ezrae itself. It is a matter 
of great regret that the manuscript is no longer in 
existence. 

The oldest Hebrew codex extant is dated 916, 
a manuscript of the prophets, brought from the 
Crimea by a distinguished Karaite scholar, A. 
Firkowitch. It is in the Imperial Library of St. 
Petersburg, and has been edited in fac simile. The 
oldest manuscript of the whole Old Testament is 
dated 1010. 

The Codex Laudianus in the Bodleian li- 
brary at Oxford, begins with Genesis 27 : 31, and 
is an important document. It originally formed 
only one volume, but now it is in two parts, folio, 
with plain, elegant letters, originally written 
without points. It is of the eleventh century, and 
is considered of high authority. It agrees to a 
remarkable extent with the Samaritan Pentateuch. 

The Codex C^ESEn^e is especially valuable as 
having in its margins some readings of still more 
ancient documents. The codex itself is placed 



78 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

toward the end of the eleventh century. It is a 
vellum folio in the German character, and contains 
the Pentateuch, the Prophets, Canticles, Ruth, 
Lamentations, Kcclesiastes, and Esther. It is in 
the Malatesta library in Bologna. 

The Codex Parisiensis, No. 27, in the Na- 
tional Library in Paris, is a quarto of the entire 
Old Testament, written on vellum in the Italian 
character. It is of high value, and dates from the 
twelfth century. 

A fragment, containing the Law from Genesis 
42 : 14 to Deuteronomy 15 : 12, was treasured in 
the library of De Rossi. The leaves appear to be 
of different ages, some of them perhaps going 
back as far as the beginning of the tenth century. 
The characters are rudely formed and there are no 
traces of the Massorah. Another very interesting 
manuscript was brought to England by Dr. Buch- 
anan, in 1806. He discovered it in the record- 
chest of a synagogue of black Jews, in the interior 
of Malayala in India. The scroll measures forty- 
eight feet in length, but in its original unimpaired 
form it must have been at least ninety feet long. 
It now consists of thirty-seven skins twenty-two 
inches long, with one hundred and seventeen col- 
umns of clear and legible writing. Unfortunately, 
it was written by some comparatively careless 
scribe, and its mistakes are so numerous as to 
make it of little critical value. 



THE HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 79 

At Odessa, there is a roll brought from Derbend, 
in Daghestan, having such an appearance of age 
that its subscription, saying that it was corrected 
in the year 580, was for some time credited, though, 
as we have said, it is now well understood that the 
earliest extant Hebrew manuscript is not older than 
the year 916. One indication of a date at least as 
late as this is in the separation of the words in this 
manuscript. But some of the letters have a very 
ancient shape, and there are no vowels, accents, 
or Massorah. It contains the five books of Moses 
complete. 

A unique manuscript is described by Davidson. 
It contains the Minor Prophets, and Isaiah, Jere- 
miah, and Ezekiel. Every page is written in two 
columns, between which, as well as below and in 
the outer margins, the Massorah is found. After 
each verse there are two points, and the vowels 
and accents are very different from those usually 
known and are written above the letters, the first 
page, however, having them both above and 
below. The whole codex is very correctly written, 
and where variations occur their testimony is of 
importance. 

Codex 634 of De Rossi is on parchment with- 
out vowel points. The manuscript contains only 
a small portion of the Law. It is in a very dilapi- 
dated state, and like a similar roll, Codex 503 of De 
Rossi, was taken from a Gheniza at Iyucca, where 



80 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

it had been buried to save it from falling into pro- 
fane hands. 

It were useless to describe further the manu- 
scripts of the Old Testament in the Hebrew, 
except to note that they vary greatly in their out- 
ward aspects, at which one might wonder, when 
the extreme conservatism with which the text was 
so long regarded is remembered. But there 
seemed to be no law regulating the size of the 
books, the amount of ornamentation that might 
be used, or the fancy of the copyist in arranging 
the marginal notes. The special rules concerning 
the copying of the text itself did not always ob- 
tain, and we have documents in which some 
liberty was taken with the letters themselves, but 
these are mostly from mediaeval times. Highly 
ornamented initial letters appear, fantastic bor- 
ders, and in some instances the " Keri " notes are 
woven together to fill the margin with forms of 
birds and flowers and beasts, and even of fabulous 
dragons. We have rolls of finest parchment and 
of rough leather. Some are not more than a score 
of feet long, while some are seven or eight times 
that length. They vary from a few inches to two 
feet in width. But whatever variations of this 
kind may appear, the agreement of all in the 
text itself is remarkable, as we have already indi- 
cated. 



V 

THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 

IT is not only to the documents in the original 
Hebrew that the appeal must be made for the 
determination of the real text. It will be under- 
stood readily that a translation into any other 
tongue would be a witness to the text from which 
it was made, and that the value of this testimony 
would be in proportion to the age, fidelity, com- 
pleteness, and other characteristics of the transla- 
tion. For example, we have noted that the 
Hebrew manuscripts which we have are not of 
earlier date than the tenth century. Suppose, 
then, that a manuscript written in the fourth cen- 
tury were found, even if it were a translation 
from a Hebrew text, it would be nearer the origi- 
nal by at least six centuries, and if the matter of 
time were the only thing to be considered, it 
would be far more valuable than the Hebrew 
documents themselves. In reality there are sev- 
eral characteristics upon which the value of a 
manuscript depends more important than mere 
antiquity ; but if we find that the translation, of 
which we have this early copy, coincides in gen- 

81 



82 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

eral with the Hebrew documents, it is in just so 
far a confirmation of their correctness. Moreover, 
the translation, of which we have this copy, for 
example, in Codex B of the Vatican, is of a date 
which we know exactly, carrying back our point 
of view to the third century before Christ, from 
which we see an original yet earlier from which 
the translation was made. Thus our copy be- 
comes an almost unimpeachable witness to a 
Hebrew text dating certainly more than three 
hundred years before Christ. Again, if in certain 
cases the text of this translation in our copy of 
the fourth century varies from that of the Hebrew 
manuscripts in our possession, a verse having been 
omitted or added, or some very considerable dif- 
ferences of reading appearing, the question is at 
once raised as to which document represents the 
earlier text most correctly. This question starts 
a long investigation, perhaps ; but it has the result 
of showing that even before the third century 
before Christ there were probably differences of 
reading in the manuscripts from which our docu- 
ments were made. All of these matters are of 
the very essence of textual criticism, and the im- 
portance of translations, and even of much more 
free paraphrases and commentaries becomes evi- 
dent. 

The Septuagint is undoubtedly the most 
important translation of the Old Testament. It 



THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 83 

has already been referred to in these pages, but 
must now be more minutely described. I have 
shown how, by their varying political fortunes, 
the Jews had been scattered to all parts of the 
world, and through the conquests of Alexander 
the Great, of Macedon, the Greek language had 
come into common use two or three centuries 
before Christ. The great city founded by the 
conqueror in Egypt, and called after himself, 
Alexandria, rose to the first importance as a politi- 
cal and commercial center. The conqueror de- 
ported to this city a large number of Jews, and 
the Ptolemies encouraged the further settlement 
of Jews in their capital, so that Alexandria be- 
came almost another "Jerusalem in Egypt." It 
is said that at least one-third of the population 
was composed of Hebrews. It has been shown 
how these colonists, like their countrymen in 
Palestine, had lost the knowledge of the ancient 
Hebrew language ; but of course, these exiles in 
the midst of a Greek population would acquire 
the Greek language more easily and quickly than 
the Jews in Palestine. These colonists needed 
their sacred books in the language which they 
spoke, and both for the service of the synagogues 
and for private uses, the demand for a translation 
was made. Doubtless the Law, or Pentateuch, 
alone was first translated, and for the beginning 
of this work the date b. c. 275 may be assumed ; 



84 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

but after the Law had found its place in the new 
tongue, the way became open for the gradual ex- 
tension of the work, and through a long period 
the rest of the Old Testament was added, the 
work ending at a time not later than B. c. 130. 

But this natural occasion is not the only expla- 
nation that has been given of the origin of the 
Septuagint, and we have other and conflicting 
accounts. On the one hand, the story begins 
with the second king of the Ptolemaic dynasty, 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was a liberal patron 
of literature and the arts. He desired, it is said, 
to know the real differences between the Jews and 
the Samaritans. He therefore engaged five trans- 
lators to prepare a copy of the Bible in Greek. 
Of the five, three were Samaritans, one was a 
Jew, and one a learned man neither Jew nor Sa- 
maritan. The Samaritans translated the Penta- 
teuch, and the rest of the work was done by the 
others. The king decided that the faith of the 
Samaritans was supported by . the translation. 
This is evidently the Samaritan side of the story, 
and is doubtless unreliable. Another account, 
which may have more reason for our considera- 
tion, assigns the first desire for a translation to 
Demetrius Phalereus, the librarian of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, that the work might find a place in 
the great library of Alexandria. A letter, un- 
doubtedly spurious, of Aristeas, gives the account 



THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 85 

of the latter's part in the scheme, showing how 
he warned the king of the difficulty of overcoming 
the prejudices of the Jews, and that it would be 
necessary to do something to gain their good pleas- 
ure. The king therefore liberated nearly two 
hundred thousand Jewish slaves, and these formed 
the large body of an embassy, of which Ptolemy's 
high officers were the leaders, bearing rich gifts 
to Jerusalem. In response to this prayer, seventy- 
two elders were set apart for the work and were 
received at Alexandria with great honors. They 
were divided into thirty-six companies. Bach 
pair was secluded in a separate cell, on the island 
of Pharos. When their work was done, it was 
found that they all agreed with each other in 
every phrase and word ! A third version of the 
story declares that the task was accomplished by 
the seventy-two translators in seventy-two days, 
by independent toil ; but the miraculous agree- 
ment is wanting and the final result was gained 
by conference and comparison. Great rewards 
were bestowed on the translators by the king, 
" for he loved to have such men and to spend his 
wealth upon them." 

These stories are certainly not true, at least in 
their details. The Greek of the translation is the 
Macedonian Greek which prevailed in Alexandria, 
and there are found many words of Egyptian 
origin, which would not be the case if the work 

H 



86 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

had been done by learned men from Jerusalem. 
The Pentateuch is by far the best part of the 
translation, and it is not impossible that it may 
have been translated at one time in the convent 
cells on the seashore, the historic fact giving rise 
to the legends. The Law bears evidence of one 
authorship. Whether the books of Moses were all 
translated from one excellent Hebrew manuscript 
or not, it is evident that the authority for the re- 
maining books was neither so good nor of such con- 
sistency. The book of Proverbs is considered to 
rank next to the Pentateuch in point of fidelity 
and style. The book of Job is thought to have 
been influenced by the acquaintance of the trans- 
lator with the Greek poets. Esther and the 
Psalms and the Prophets were translated during 
the reign of Ptolemy Philometer, B. c. 180-145, 
but no definite dates can be assigned in any 
case. Isaiah has many omissions and inter- 
polations, and the book of Daniel was so badly 
done that another by Theodotion was preferred 
by the Christian church. It is perfectly clear that 
the whole work covered a long period in its accom- 
plishment, and even if the royal favor may have 
smiled upon the origin, the real occasion and 
course of the production must be assigned to the 
natural need of the Jewish colonists. As it pro- 
gressed, and after its completion, it was adopted 
by those for whom it was intended, and rapidly 



THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 87 

won its way to almost universal acceptance, so 
that in the time of Christ and for a century after- 
ward it remained the chief authority among the 
Dispersion and the popular book of the Palestinian 
Jews, and was only discredited at last by them 
because the Christian church had taken possession 
of it, and was making use of it in its conflict with 
the Jewish faith. New Jewish translations then 
came into favor, as those of Aquila and Theodo- 
tion. For controversial purposes the Jews then 
denied the agreement of the Septuagint with the 
original Hebrew, but this was not until the second 
century of our era. 

The constant and wide use of the Septuagint 
naturally called a vast number of copies into 
existence. These were subject to the inevitable 
mistakes of all copies, and to-day the question of 
the correct reading is one of the most important 
connected with the textual study of the Old Tes- 
tament. Indeed, as early as the time of Origen 
(a. d. 230), the inaccuracies and the marginal 
notes had become so numerous and troublesome 
that a revision of the whole work was greatly de- 
sired. Origen undertook the enormous labor, 
which was not destined to reach completion until 
the expiration of twenty-eight years. He com- 
pared the Greek text then generally accepted 
with the Hebrew and with other Greek transla- 
tions, collecting for the purpose manuscripts from 



88 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

every known source. The work was begun in 
Csesarea and finished in Tyre, and it was " epoch- 
making " in the study of the word. He prepared 
a Bible called the Hexapla, in which were written 
in six adjacent columns six texts, in the following 
order : (i) The Hebrew text in Hebrew charac- 
ters ; (2) the Hebrew text in Greek characters ; 
(3) the Greek translation of Aquila ; (4) that of 
Symmachus ; (5) the Septuagint ; (6) the transla- 
tion of Theodotion. Another edition, without the 
two Hebrew columns, was called the Tetrapla, and 
others were called Octapla and Knneapla, according 
to the eight or nine different texts displayed. It 
is probable, however, that the last named was not 
from Origen's hand. In this great work, how- 
ever, a colossal fault was committed, since Origen 
did not content himself with simply placing 
the text of the Septuagint beside the others. He 
also noted in the text itself its deviations from the 
Hebrew, furnishing such words, sentences, or 
paragraphs as were missing in the Hebrew with 
an obelus, or sign of erasure, and interpolating 
with an asterisk those found in the Hebrew and 
missing in the Septuagint, using for this purpose 
the readings found in other translations, princi- 
pally from Theodotion's. These and other inter- 
ferences became the source of many inaccuracies 
when the text of the Septuagint of the Hexapla 
came to be copied in the later years, often with 



THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 89 

the neglect of Origen's critical marks ; so that 
Origen in a measure defeated the purpose of his 
own great labors, and unwittingly transmitted 
many errors. But these it is now possible to cor- 
rect, since the critical notes of Origen are extant 
and can be applied. 

The principal manuscripts of the Septuagint are 
the Uncials, or those written in large letters 
throughout ; the Cotton fragments of the fourth 
century; the Vatican Codex, No. 1209, which 
holds the first rank with respect to the purity of the 
text ; the Sinaitic manuscript, in which the most 
of the Old Testament is preserved, with which 
should be reckoned the smaller portion of the 
same document, the Codex Friderico-Augustanus, 
discovered by Tischendorf in 1846, and placed in 
the University Library at Leipzig ; and the Alex- 
andrine Codex in the British Museum. Other 
manuscripts of less importance exist, but need 
not be mentioned, while those here named will 
be more fully described when we come to their 
interesting, almost romantic, stories in connection 
with the New Testament. The Septuagint was 
first printed entire in Greek in the Complutensian 
Polyglot, 1514-1517. 

Considering the wonderful history of the Sep- 
tuagint, taking into account its early acceptance 
by the Jews and its almost universal use for at 
least a century before the advent of Christ, remem- 



90 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

bering that Jesus himself was familiar with it, and 
that the writers of the New Testament constantly 
quoted from it instead of from the original Hebrew, 
so that it has thrown the potency of its language 
over all the Christian church ; in view too, of the 
great fact that the early successes of Christianity 
are almost inconceivable except as the way was 
prepared by the diffusion of the Old Testament in 
this version throughout the known world, we can 
hardly close our account of it without citing the 
language of Dean Stanley : "If the ' noble army 
of translators, ' as they have been sometimes called, 
may look with affectionate veneration on Jerome's 
cell of Bethlehem, on Luther's study in the castle 
of the Wartburg, on the Jerusalem chamber, 
where twice over the majestic language of the 
English Bible has been revised, yet the place of 
their most sacred pilgrimage should be the narrow, 
rocky islet of the Alexandrian harbor, where was 
kindled a brighter and more enduring beacon in 
the intellectual and religious sphere even than the 
world-renowned Pharos, which in the maritime 
world has been the parent of all the lights that 
from shore to shore and sea to sea have guided the 
mariners of two thousand years." 

Other Greek translations are those of Aquila, 
Theodotion, and Symmachus, the last named 
being an Ebionite Christian, whose work is not 
of so much value for criticism upon the Old Tes- 



THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 91 

tament, as it is less literal than the others, and 
transfers the spirit of the original more faithfully 
than it does the letter. Aquila was a native of 
Sinope, in Asia Minor. His version was very 
literal and his scrupulous care was such that he 
made a second edition to bring it even nearer than 
the first to the Hebrew original. The work was 
highly esteemed by the Jews, who called it the 
" Hebrew Verity. " Irenaeus says that Aquila was 
a proselyte to Judaism, and he has been identified 
in the opinion of some scholars with the Aquila 
of Acts 18 : 2, but this is more than doubtful, not- 
withstanding the identity of birthplace in Pontus. 
We know his translation only through Origen's 
Hexapla. The critical value of it is great, as it 
is very close to the original, and a comparison 
shows that Aquila had very nearly the same text 
that our Hebrew Bibles have to-day. But the 
version has not been without suspicion, since 
Irenaeus and others of the Christian Fathers have 
accused Aquila of altering certain passages relat- 
ing to the Messianic hopes of the Jews, so that 
the latter were furnished with a powerful weapon 
against the church. But if Aquila was a convert 
to Christianity, as those who find him mentioned 
in Acts 18 : 2 believe, why should he have done 
this ? It can only be explained by giving some 
credit to the story that he was at first not a Jew, 
but a Roman, or Greek, and was sent by the Em- 



92 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

peror Hadrian to Jerusalem as a surveyor and archi- 
tect ; that while there he was converted to Chris- 
tianity, but insisting on the practice of some of 
his old pagan customs, was reprimanded by the 
church. This quenched his half- kindled zeal, 
and he immediately left the church and became a 
Jew ; and as is often the case with perverts, he 
became more zealous even than those whom he 
had joined, and devoted himself utterly to his new 
faith. Thus his translation was produced. It is 
quite true that the version shows some traces of 
dogmatic influence, and it stands as an indication 
of the hostilities of the early part of the second 
century between the Jews and the Christians. 
Indeed, the existence of all of these Greek ver- 
sions as against the Septuagint shows the same 
thing. The whole Jewish world was now becom- 
ing more closely allied to the Palestinian Syna- 
gogue. The rise of the new Christianity had 
concentrated attention upon the home land and 
its conflict. The appeal was more and more to 
the Palestinian Bible in its exact readings, rather 
than to the more free Greek Bible of the Disper- 
sion. The constant use of the latter by the 
Christians and the overwhelming force of their 
arguments from the Scriptures drove the Hellen- 
istic Jews from their own citadel to the refuge 
afforded by the Hebrew Bible itself. And so it 
came to pass that the Jews were once more cen- 



THE GREEK TRANSLATIONS 93 

tralized in Palestine and its field of strife ; and 
the Hebrew Bible asserted again its supremacy. 
The new translations were imperatively demanded 
for the new emergency, and they thus mark in 
the most interesting manner the history of the 
struggle between Judaism and Christianity. 1 

Theodotion's version needs but a few words 
after what has been said. He too was a proselyte 
and not a native Jew. His version was made 
about the same time as Aquila's, or in the first 
half of the second century. It is more a close 
revision of the Septuagint than an entirely new 
translation from the Hebrew. His work came 
into no very wide acceptance with the Jews, and 
is chiefly noteworthy for the adoption by the 
Christian church of his book of Daniel, which 
has been preserved to us complete in only one 
manuscript, the Codex Chisianus. It is to be re- 
marked that this translation of Daniel preserves 
the apocryphal additions to that book, and from 
this they were translated by Jerome in the Latin 
Vulgate, an account of which is given in another 
chapter. 

1 Schurer, " The Jewish People in the Time of Christ," III., 3, 169. 



VI 

THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD 

'TRANSLATIONS of the Old Testament into 
J- foreign tongues were not the only documents 
besides the Hebrew manuscripts which were of 
use in the popular understanding of the Scriptures. 
We have described the very early practice of trans- 
lating or targuming the Hebrew, when it was 
read in the synagogues ; and while this custom 
gave rise to a wide knowledge of the sacred 
writings, and was supplemented by a sort of run- 
ning commentary, these translations were not com- 
mitted to writing for a very considerable space of 
time on account of the great reverence for the 
sacred rolls themselves. But as time went on and 
this prejudice decreased, while also the volume of 
comments very largely increased, it was found 
necessary to reduce to written form all this material, 
and this literature fell into the following classes : 

I. The Targums, or translations into the 
common language of the people, or Aramaic. 

II. The Talmud (Learning), a collection of 
writings consisting of paraphrases, various oral 
teachings, commentaries, and similar materials, 
gathered under two heads : 

94 






THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD 95 

i. The MisJuia (Repetition), oral teachings 
transmitted from earliest times and including ex- 
planations of Scripture ; and 

2. The Ge?nara (Completion), comments upon 
the Mishna. 

We shall consider these in their order. 

The Targums are the earliest and most im- 
portant writings of this great mass of Jewish 
literature. Upon a previous page the doubt has 
been expressed about the earliest scene to which 
has been fondly assigned the distinction of being 
the first historical instance of targuming. The 
Jews have pointed back to Ezra and that affecting 
scene before the water gate in Jerusalem, when 
the copy of the Law was brought forth and read 
to the great congregation. If the people had not 
forgotten its language they had lost sight of its 
requirements, and knew only by dim tradition of 
the ancient glories of their nation. Then " Ezra 
opened the book in the sight of all the people ' ' 
as he stood on the "pulpit of wood" erected for 
the occasion. But the people could not under- 
stand, and those who had been selected "read in 
the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave 
the sense, and caused them to understand the 
reading." One would like to believe, as the 
legend has it, that this was the beginning of all 
the translations henceforth given in the syna- 
gogues so long as the Jewish worship should last. 



96 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Kzra is fondly called the first methurgeman, our 
word dragoman or interpreter. But whether the 
custom began with him or not, and whether it 
prevailed in the time of Jesus x or came in later, 
very early in our era every synagogue had its inter- 
preter, who followed the reader of the Scripture 
with a translation into the vernacular for the con- 
gregation. We have noted already how for centu- 
ries this practice of targuming prevailed without 
any writing, lest the written words of the 
methurgeman might be mistaken for the real 
Scripture or supplant it in the reverence of the 
people. A late legend speaks of a targum of the 
book of Job found in the days of Gamaliel, who 
ordered it to be buried quickly under the very 
foundations of the walls of the temple, where cer- 
tainly it would be likely to do no harm. This 
prejudice against written translations was of long 
continuance ; 2 but we can easily imagine that in 
spite of it the continued repetitions in the syna- 
gogues would take on themselves a fixed form. 
At last some one was bold enough to break over 
the custom, either for the sake of convenience or to 
give a wider circulation to the sacred books, and 
the voluminous oral interpretations, which might 

1 Compare Luke 4 : 16-20, where special mention of the 
methurgeman does not occur. 

2 Kautzsch thinks the foundation for the earlier Targums may 
have been laid in the first century before Christ. 



THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD 97 

have become by this time even verbally crystal- 
ized in large measure, were written out. 

The value of the Targums for the criticism of 
the text, however, is but small, especially as the 
earliest which we possess was written after the 
Massoretic text was already established. They are 
also too free to allow the most exact comparisons. 
The most important of the Targums are the fol- 
lowing : 

1. The Targinn of Onkelos. It comprises the 
Pentateuch. Who was Onkelos? Various con- 
jectures have sought to answer the question. It 
has been held that he was a native of Babylon. 
Others have said that he was born in Sinope, in 
Pontus, and these have identified him with 
Aquila, whose translation into Greek has been 
mentioned, the name Onkelos being only another 
form of Aquilas or Aquila. He has been described 
as a pupil of the great Rabbi Hillel, most famous 
a half-century before Christ, and this supposition 
would make the pupil perhaps a contemporary of 
Jesus. The Talmud speaks of an Onkelos as con- 
temporary with Gamaliel, possibly one of his 
pupils, and in that case he may have been contem- 
porary and perhaps a fellow-scholar with Paul. 
This Onkelos of the Talmud can be identified with 
the Greek translator Aquila. But to conclude that 
Aquila was the author of the Targum of Onke- 
los, or that this Onkelos was himself its author, 



0,0 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

seems to be without warrant. Geiger, as quoted 
by Prof. Wright, 1 maintains that this Targum, 
because of its extreme closeness to the Hebrew 
text, was called the Targum of Onkelos, not be- 
cause it was either written or edited by him. As 
the Greek of Onkelos (Aquila) was remarkable for 
its literal character, so this Targum was literal, 
of an Onkelos character, and thus became known 
as the Onkelos Targum. In reality it appears to 
have been the work of no single author or editor, 
but the production of many hands, perhaps of a 
school. In it there is a marked avoidance of the 
legends and stories so often found in the later 
Jewish works, making them almost unparalleled 
for their absurd fancies, a wilderness of rubbish. 
This Targum is simple, reserved, and dignified, 
and it thus occupies a place far above the level 
even of the Targums that follow it most closely in 
time. 

2. Jonathan on the Prophets. Jonathan also is 
said to have been a scholar of Hillel. A wilder 
tradition says that he wrote from the personal dic- 
tation of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The 
Talmud says that when this Targum was given 
to Jonathan by the prophets the land of Israel 
was shaken by a great earthquake, and a voice 
was heard, asking: "Who is this who has re- 
vealed my secrets unto the sons of men ? " To 

1 " Introduction to the Old Testament," p. 43. 






THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD 99 

which Jonathan answered with much boldness. 
It is much more free than the rendering of Onke- 
los, and is doubtless of later date. The English 
Authorized version of Isaiah 33 : 22, reads : "For 
the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, 
the Lord is our king ; he will save us," and the 
Targum enlarges the verse thus : u For the Lord 
is our judge, who delivered us with his power 
from Mizraim ; the Lord is our teacher, for he has 
given us the doctrine of the Torah from Sinai ; 
the Lord is our king, he will deliver us and give 
us righteous restitution from the army of Gog." 
Another example offers from the familiar passage 
in the first book of Kings 19 : 11, 12 ; the Targum 
reads : " And he said (to Elijah), Arise and stand 
on the mountain before the Lord. And God re- 
vealed himself and before him a host of angels of 
the wind, cleaving the mountain and breaking 
the rocks before the Lord ; but not in the host of 
angels was the Shechinah. And after the host of 
angels of the wind came a host of angels of com- 
motion ; but not in the host of the angels of com- 
motion was the Shechinah of the Lord. And after 
the host of the angels of commotion came a host 
of angels of fire ; but not in the host of the 
angels of fire was the Shechinah of the Lord. 
But after the host of the angels of the fire came 
voices singing in the silence." These are good 
examples of the tendency to amplify the original 



IOO THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

passages, a tendency which grew as time ad- 
vanced, resulting sometimes in grotesque perver- 
sions, and sometimes, as in the contrast of the last 
words of the above example with the preceding 
verses, in passages of great beauty. Several other 
Targums might be mentioned, but they are of 
slight importance, and a good idea of all is ob- 
tained from the two thus presented. There are 
eight in all. 

The Talmud is of very little value for any 
points of criticism as to the mere text of the Old 
Testament ; it can only be treated here in brief, 
as an interesting example of the later rabbinic 
freedom with respect to their Scriptures in matters 
of interpretation. It is well understood how 
the scribes, even before the time of Jesus, had 
" hedged " the L,aw all around with their tradi- 
tions, so that the Law itself was hardly regarded 
any longer in its purity, while the " hedge " by 
which it was protected made men miserable with 
its petty exactions. " Woe unto you, ye lawyers," 
cried Jesus, u for ye have taken away the key of 
knowledge : ye entered not in yourselves and 
them that were entering in ye hindered." "Woe 
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, for ye tithe mint 
and anise and rue, and all manner of herbs, and 
pass over judgment and the love of God : these 
ought ye to have done and not left the other 
undone." This practice of minute definition, 



THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD IOI 

already established in the time of Christ, was the 
foundation of the later writings gathered into the 
Talmud, and it had become so exaggerated in 
aftertimes that the superiority of the Talmud in 
its various parts to the Scriptures themselves was 
openly taught. The Talmud compared with the 
L,aw was as wine to water ; one might neglect the 
reading of the Scriptures, but to read the Mishna 
was meritorious, and to read the Gemara would 
win the greatest rewards. The modern reader of 
the Talmud will not wonder that such recom- 
pense was promised to him who would peruse its 
pages, for they are a great mass of tedious and 
generally silly writings, having almost no histori- 
cal or philosophical value, with only occasional 
passages of force and beauty. Dr. J. B. L,ightfoot, 
whose mastery of the rabbinic learning gives 
him a better right to speak of it, than any other, 
says : " The almost unconquerable difficulties of 
style, the frightful roughness of the language, and 
the amazing emptiness and sophistry of the mat- 
ters handled, do torture, vex, and tire him that 
reads them." Add to this the fact that the work 
as printed fills twelve or thirteen folios, or quarto 
volumes, according to the edition, and the task of 
reading it can be appreciated better. And yet it 
is wrong to suppose that the Talmud has no oases 
of refreshment. Many of its sayings are closely 
the echo of Christ's words. Many passages are 



103 THE) PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

of great poetic beauty or suggestiveness. Pos- 
sibly some of Christ's teaching may have had its 
first human origin in the Talmudic traditions 
taught him when a boy, for in the Talmud as 
written later are many peculiar words, phrases, 
and doctrines which he adapted to the large and 
new thought of Christianity. And there are pas- 
sages which point back to the old Scriptures with 
extreme reverence : " Turn them, and turn them 
again, for everything is to be found in them " ; 
' l Moses was commanded to give six hundred and 
thirteen commandments to the people ; David in 
the fifteenth Psalm reduced them to eleven ; the 
prophet Micah reduced them to three : ' What 
doth the Iyord require of thee but to do justly and 
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy 
God ? ' Amos reduced them to one : * Seek ye 
me and ye shall live.' " 

A page of the Talmud presents a strange ap- 
pearance. Somewhat nearer the top than the 
center of the page there is a quadrangular para- 
graph of ordinary Hebrew text such as may be 
seen in an ordinary octavo Hebrew Bible. Around 
this on every side is a mass of printing in much 
smaller type, in a dialect abounding in Aramaisms 
and printed in rabbinic characters of a late date. 
The patch of largest text is the Mishna, and the 
text all around it is the Gemara, or commentary. 
Many notes are added, and the whole appearance 



THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD IO3 

of the page thus divided is very extraordinary to one 
accustomed to the orderly page of an English book. 

The Talmud exists in two recensions, the Pales- 
tinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, dif- 
fering from each other in many of the characteris- 
tics of the commentaries. It should also be noted 
that two distinct kinds of material are incorporated 
in the Talmud, the law and its strict interpreta- 
tion called " Halacha," and the legends developed 
from the sacred history, with various religious and 
ethical views, to which the general name " Hag- 
gada " was given. If the assignment of these 
terms is remembered further definition will be 
needless. 

The Mishna, which is common to both Talmuds, 
contains the oldest codified traditional Jewish law 
that has come down to our time. It is arranged 
in six great sections, written in Hebrew, devoted 
almost wholly to the Halacha. The six sections 
comprise sixty-three different tracts, and a mere 
list of them is of value as showing the nature of 
the Mishna and the kind of life at the time. 

Section I. i. Formulas of blessings and 
prayers. 

2. On rights of the poor in harvests. 

3. The treatment of fruits and tithing them. 

4. Illegal mixing of animals, vegetables, cloth- 
ing, etc. 

5. The sabbatical year. 



104 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

6. The dues of the priests. 

7. The tithes of the L,evites, 

8. Secondary tithes to be paid at Jerusalem. 

9. Dough offerings and rules for baking. 

10. Against using fruits of newly planted trees. 

11. Presentation of firstlings. 
Section II. 1. The Sabbath festival. 

2. Uniting of separate localities to allow freer 
journeys on the Sabbath. 

3. The Passover. 

4. The half-shekel tax. 

5. The day of Atonement. 

6. The feast of Tabernacles. 

7. May one eat an egg laid on a feast day. 

8. The New Year festival. 

9. Fasting and mourning. 

10. The reading of the "roll," that is, of the 
book of Esther on the feast of Purim. 

11. The feast days between the first and last 
feast days of the great festivals. 

12. The duty of going to the feasts at Jerusalem. 
Section III. 1. L,evirate marriage with a 

brother-in-law. 

2. Marriage contracts. 

3. Women's vows. 

4. The Nazarite vow. 

5. Proceeding against suspected adulterers. 

6. Divorces. 

7. Betrothals. 



THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD IO5 

Section IV. i. Injuries and legal damages. 

2. The same between masters and slaves, em- 
ployers and employed, borrowers and lenders. 

3. Municipal and social regulations. 

4. The Sanhedrin and criminal law. 

5. Punishment by flogging. 

6. Oaths and sacrilege. 

7. Witnesses. 

8. Idolatry and heathenism. 

9. Sayings of famous scribes from B. c. 200 to 
A. D. 200. 

10. Unintentional offenses. 

Section V. i. Sacrifices. 

2. Meat offerings. 

3 to 11. Similar regulations concerning offer- 
ings. 

Section VI. i. Household furniture and its 
purifying. 

2. Defilement of tents and houses. 

3. Leprosy. 

4. Pollution contracted from the dead. 

5. Lesser defilements. 

6. Water fitted for bathing. 

7 to 12. Further regulations about defilements. 

It will be seen that the Mishna thus follows 
pretty closely the legal outlines of the penta- 
teuchal regulations. 

The Gemara professes to complete the Mishna by 
comments upon it, and there are two different forms 



106 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

of the Gemara, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian. 
Its interpretatons are whimsical to the last degree. 
"The Holy One — blessed be he! will in the 
future bring together Mount Sinai and Tabor 
upon Carmel, and place Jerusalem on the top of 
them ; for it is written, ■ The mountain of the 
I^ord's house shall be established on the top of the 
mountains.' " The following is from the tract 
Sota : " Once when the Persian empire was at the 
summit of its power, an attempt was made to dis- 
cover the body of Moses. A countless host of Persian 
soldiers was sent to search Mt. Nebo. When they 
came to the top of the mountain they saw the 
sepulchre of Moses distinctly at the bottom. They 
hastened to the valley and then they saw it at the 
top. Thus the search went on until they were 
compelled to give it up." With regard to the 
manna in the desert and the belief that it was 
angels' food and was prepared by angels, it is 
written that "it is in the third firmament, called 
Schechakim, where the mills are in which the 
manna is ground. . . And when the manna fell, 
pearls and diamonds fell with it and heaped them- 
selves up on the mountains, so that they could be 
seen from far." Sometimes the tracts are merely 
childish, sometimes they approach the blas- 
phemous : " The day has twelve hours ; in the 
first three God sits and studies the L,aw ; in the 
next three he sits and judges the world ; in the 



THE TARGUMS AND THE TALMUD 107 

next three he sits and nourishes the whole world ; 
and in the last three he sits and plays with Levia- 
than. " Some of our modern nursery tales seem 
to have originated in early Jewish times, and to 
have found their first record in the Talmud. We 
find almost exactly u The House that Jack Built," 
so far as its structural form is concerned ; and the 
story has an allegorical force, the kid being Israel, 
the cat Babylon, the dog Persia, the staff Greece, 
the fire Rome, the water the Turks, the ox the 
European nations, who are to rescue the land of 
Palestine from the Mohammedans, the butcher, 
the angel of death, and the Holy One or Messiah, 
referring to successive victors by whom the tri- 
umph of God's kingdom is to be secured at last. 
We cannot give the whole story, but it goes on in 
the familiar fashion : 

A kid, a kid my father bought 
For two pieces of money : 
A kid, a kid. 

Then came the cat and ate the kid 
That my father bought 
For two pieces of money : 
A kid, a kid. 

Then came the dog and bit the cat 
That ate the kid that my father bought 
For two pieces of money : 
A kid, a kid. 

But the most extravagant of these tales arose 



108 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

only in the later times, when from the simpler 
age in which the Christian era began the world 
had passed into the darkness that soon deepened 
into the period known as the Dark Ages. It is 
peculiarly interesting to note that even this Jewish 
tradition at the time of Christ was not nearly so 
fanciful and exuberant as it became four centuries 
later. In common with the intellectual culture 
of the whole world at the time of the advent, the 
Jewish mind was comparatively clear, vigorous, 
and discriminating, and the new religion with its 
new Scriptures had to meet a keen and skeptical 
criticism in which Greek and Roman and Jew 
conspired to test the quality of the new faith to its 
utmost. We are again impelled to the conclusion 
that the period in which Christianity first brought 
its new faith to the world, was one peculiarly 
adapted to its reception, not only on account of 
the general spiritual hunger of mankind, but also 
because the intellectual condition of the time was 
one of strong vitality. 



VII 

OTHER VERSIONS AND LITERATURE 

ONIvY brief mention need be made of other 
translations of the Old Testament and of the 
works of writers from which our knowledge of the 
text is aided. Many of these works are of even 
more significance in connection with the New 
Testament, and will be mentioned again in future 
chapters. 

The Syriac versions claim the first attention ; 
and of these the Peshito, the Simple or Literal, is 
most noteworthy on account of its close adherence 
to the Hebrew original. Syria was a name ap- 
plied to a large extent of country west of the 
Euphrates River, and between it and the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. At one time Syria included Pales- 
tine, but at the time when this translation was 
made the latter was a separate province. By this 
time Christianity had widely spread, and Syria 
had received its missionaries and a knowledge of 
the truth. There is an interesting and beautiful 
legend told by Kusebius, who wrote in the early 
part of the fourth century, that somehow a king 
of Syria in the time of Christ, named Abgarus, 
had learned of the Saviour and sent a letter to him, 
k 109 



IIO THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

requesting him to come and heal him of a disease, 
and teach him the truth. The letter beautifully 
says, in closing : " I have heard too, that the Jews 
murmur against thee, and are plotting to do thee 
harm. I have a very small but noble country, 
which is enough for us both. ' ' To this invitation 
Jesus is said to have answered kindly, but de- 
clining it on account of his mission : ' ' Blessed art 
thou, Abgarus, who hast not seen and yet hast be- 
lieved in me, for it is written concerning me that 
they who have seen me will not believe, that they 
who have not seen me may believe and live. But 
in regard to what thou hast written, that I should 
come to thee, it is needful that I should fulfill all 
things here for which I have been sent, and after 
this fulfillment to be received up again by him 
who sent me. And after I have been received 
up, I will send one of my disciples to thee, who 
may heal thy disease and give life both to thee 
and to those who are with thee." Doubtless these 
letters are of a date too late to be genuine ; nor is 
it necessary to seek any such origin of the Chris- 
tian faith in Syria. We have in the book of the 
Acts and other Scriptures full testimony to the 
early preaching of the gospel in Antioch and else- 
where within the boundaries of this country. And 
as Christianity spread it was natural that a demand 
for the apostolic writings should arise, and coupled 
with this a wish for the older Scriptures also, espe- 



OTHER VERSIONS AND LITERATURE III 

cially on the part of converts from Judaism. As 
will be seen later, there are remains of the Gospels 
in Syriac probably older than the Peshito ; but 
the Peshito of the Old Testament, dating probably 
in the latter half of the second century, is of 
greatest value for textual purposes and with ref- 
erence to the canon. In the case of disputed 
passages an appeal to this version would go far 
toward settling the question as to what the 
Christians of the sub-apostolic age read in their 
Bibles. The Peshito is of great value in connec- 
tion with the text of the New Testament. Other 
Syriac versions, like the Hexaplar Syriac transla- 
tion of the Septuagint (a. d. 616-618) are of less 
value as witnesses to the Hebrew text than in their 
relation to the Greek of the Septuagint. 

Versions in Arabic, no less than eight, contain 
the whole or parts of the Old Testament, that of 
Saadis being the earliest and most important ; but 
when it is said that he died as late as A. D. 942, 
it may easily be seen that none of the Arabic 
versions come near enough to the ancient originals 
to be of great value in criticism. An interesting 
group of translations is the Egyptian, including 
the Coptic for Lower Egypt, the Sahidic for 
Upper Egypt, and the Bashmuric in a dialect 
spoken in a province of the Delta of the Nile. 
Versions are also found in Armenian, Persian, 
Ethiopic, and other tongues, but they are of such 



112 



THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 



secondary importance that a mere mention of them 
is enough. 

The ancient Latin versions, based on the Sep- 
tuagint, are of great value. The Old Latin is the 
oldest, made by unknown translators and widely 
used in Africa in the second century. Its docu- 
ments differed much in their texts, and Augustine 
gave preference to one to which, in the De Doc- 
trina Christi, he applies the term Itala, a word 
often used since as applicable to the Old Latin 
in general. But it should not be so used. If it is 
not the error of a scribe, it might designate Italy 
as the place where Augustine believed the version 
was made. Only fragments remain, containing 
the whole books of the Psalms and Esther, with a 
part of the Apocrypha. 1 

The Vulgate is of special interest for many rea- 
sons. Its story is one of long and patient labor on 
the part of one man devoting himself to solitary 
toils that would have dismayed many, meeting 
with opposition and obloquy when the results were 
given to the world, but earning at last the accept- 
ance of his work by the people, and having the 
honor of its being the first book printed in Europe 
after the invention of the art. The older Latin 
had served its purpose well, but in the process of 
time its defects had increased and become better 

1 See later pages of this book for the Old Latin of the New Testa- 
ment. 



OTHER VERSIONS AND LITERATURE 113 

known, so that the need of revision, if not of a 
wholly new translation, was apparent. During the 
fourth century the Latin churches grew rapidly in 
power and importance, as might have been fore- 
seen the moment when Constantine the Great 
espoused the cause of Christianity, declared him- 
self a convert, and made the new faith the religion 
of his empire. Many forces besides the imperial 
influence tended in the same direction, and the 
great leaders of thought were no longer confined 
to Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople. 
Rome was regnant in the West, and just at this 
time the Italian influence was exceedingly great. 
The Latin scholars were anxiously looking for the 
means to translate anew the Bible. It was a great 
task. Who would undertake it ? The answer 
was given by the arrival in Rome of a monk from 
Bethlehem, who was probably the man best fitted 
of all the scholars in the world for the work. He 
was Sophronius Eusebius Hieronyrnus, or as he is 
generally known, St. Jerome. He was born at 
Stridon in Dalmatia, A. d. 329. We need not tell 
the story of his earlier years, except to say that 
they were filled with the pursuits of a scholar, 
so that he was famous for his acquirements both 
in the East and the West when in 382 he arrived 
in Rome. There he at once assumed an important 
place, and became the secretary of Pope Damasus. 
He allied himself with the strong church party 



114 TH ^ PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

that favored monasticism, and in the strife of the 
time was the leading figure. He was a splendid 
fighter, and the pages of his writings teem with 
passages of a character either utterly to destroy or 
rapidly to make enemies. His austerities were 
marked, and his followers were famed for the cruel 
penances that he exacted. One of them, a tender 
young widow named Blesilla, died beneath her 
self-inflicted penalties, and the public verdict laid 
the responsibility for the tragedy at Jerome's door. 
u Why do we tolerate these accursed monks"? 
was the cry raised at Blesilla's funeral. ' ' Away 
with them, stone them, cast them into the Tiber ! " 
Jerome faced all the hostility with contempt, and 
often with outspoken denunciation, and showed 
himself not only a man who could subject himself 
to all manner of privation and hardship, but also 
compel others to recognize his power and go in his 
ways. It was this man, practically the architect 
of monasticism, who reluctantly at first, but after- 
ward with enthusiasm, gave himself to the pro- 
duction of the desired Latin translation which 
was destined to do more than any other one agent 
to shape Western Christianity during at least ten 
centuries. Dean Milman says 1 : "Jerome's Bible 
is a wonderful work, still more as achieved by one 
man and that by a Western Christian, even with 
all the advantages of study and residence in the 

i " Latin Christianity," I., 2, 117. 



OTHER VERSIONS AND LITERATURE 115 

East. It almost created a new language. 1 The 
inflexible Latin became pliant and expansive, nat- 
uralizing foreign Eastern imagery, Eastern modes 
of expression and of thought, and Eastern relig- 
ious notions, most uncongenial to its own genius 
and character; and yet retaining much of its own 
peculiar strength, solidity, and majesty. . . The 
Vulgate was even more perhaps than the papal 
power the foundation of Latin Christianity. . . 
the great work of Jerome could not have been 
achieved at Rome, assuredly not by a pope. It 
was in his cell at Bethlehem, meditating and com- 
pleting the Vulgate, that Jerome fixed for centu- 
ries the dominion of Latin Christianity over the 
mind of man." 

Jerome began the work of translation while in 
Rome, but Pope Damasus died and he soon de- 
serted that city, not defeated but wearied with its 
strifes, and content to fulminate from afar against 
the sins of that luxurious center of the world's 
life. He had begun upon the New Testament, 
which he revised, using the Old Latin (Itala) ver- 
sion as the basis, and the Greek versions and 
the collations of Origen as well as the original 
text as aids. This part was finished in the year 

1 In this respect the Vulgate may be compared with the English 
versions and their influence upon the English language. See " The 
History of the English Bible," by Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, 
American Baptist Publication Society, pp. 131-144; 171-185. 



Il6 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

385. Then the Old Testament was taken up and 
the Psalms were translated, and afterward several 
other books; but with growing dissatisfaction 
on the part both of the scholar himself and 
the world for which he was toiling, Jerome felt 
that he ought to be doing it more thoroughly, 
starting with the original Hebrew, and proceed- 
ing fearlessly and in full satisfaction of his con- 
science as a scholar. The clergy took the other 
view : Jerome was far too thorough ; the changes 
from the old version were too radical ; the familiar 
passages, endeared by long usage, were changed 
too much ; the people would get the idea that 
they could not trust their Bible ; and so all the 
objections that are always used at such times were 
hurled at the devoted scholar. But we have al- 
ready seen that Jerome was not made of timorous 
stuff. He hurled back his burning sentences 
against the "two-legged asses," and straightway 
resolved to follow his own judgment. He cast 
away the old sources from which he had been 
working, and went back to the Hebrew manu- 
scripts themselves. He was in Bethlehem and 
had peculiar facilities for the acquisition of He- 
brew and access to Hebrew documents, some of 
which doubtless were very ancient even then. 
And he went on year after year, honestly and 
boldly, doing his work as best he knew how, and 
producing at last a version of the Old Testament 



OTHER VERSIONS AND LITERATURE 117 

which was to be the received text of the Latin 
church, and the basis of many other translations. 
But he did not live to see its triumph. It was 
not until a hundred and fifty years had passed 
after he was laid to rest, that Gregory the Great 
turned the tide in favor of Jerome's translation by 
using it in his "Moralia." The papal example 
was enough, and at last the version found proper 
appreciation, and the Council of Trent (1546), 
declared it "authentic." This full adoption by 
the church demanded a publication of a standard 
text, and in the pontificate of Sixtus V., in 1590, 
an editio authentica appeared. A papal Bull de- 
clared this edition to be "true, lawful, authentic, 
and authoritative in all public and private dispu- 
tations." But, alas even for papal infallibility! 
the work had hardly come into use before serious 
errors appeared and emendations were made in 
some cases by pen and in others by printed slips 
pasted over the text. A new edition was inevita- 
ble, and one was issued in 1592 by Clement VIII. , 
having about three thousand variations from the 
former edition. Other editions were issued in 
1593 and 1598, but even to the present time no 
critical edition has been published which is of 
satisfactory value. 

The text of the Vulgate is not of uniform char- 
acter, some portions having much greater merit 
than others both as to sources and translation. 



Il8 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

The larger portion of the Old Testament is from 
the Hebrew, bnc not without influence from other 
sources ; the Psalms and the apocryphal books of 
Baruch, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Maccabees, 
are from the Itala. The New Testament, which 
was first completed, is not so good as the Old Tes- 
tament. Jerome added to his text critical annota- 
tions, but these are lost from the Vulgate as we 
have it, greatly to the detriment of the work. 
The great version of the Roman church in mod- 
ern times, the Douay Bible, containing the Old 
Testament rendered in English at Douay in 
1609, and the New Testament completed at 
Rheims in 1582, was made from the Vulgate by 
the Romanists who had fled from England upon 
the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and the Psalter 
and other portions of the English Prayer Book 
are also from this version. Even to-day, there- 
fore, and notwithstanding the larger learning that 
the centuries have brought, the labors of the 
solitary monk in the cell of Bethlehem are bear- 
ing fruit, and the faithfulness and heroism of the 
ancient scholar are influencing the life of this far- 
off time. Albrecht Diirer, the artist of Nurem- 
berg, pictured St. Jerome in his cell with a fox 
and a lion, symbols of skill and strength, lying at 
his feet as he labored at his great task. Skill and 
strength were in it, and like every other good and 
genuine work, it endures the test of time. 



VIII 

MATERIALS FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 

AT T HEN we come to the materials for the criti- 
V » cism of the text of the New Testament, we 
not only reach the most important part of onr 
study, but find the greatest satisfaction in their 
abundance and antiquity. It was said of the 
manuscripts of the Old Testament that none are 
extant of a date earlier than the tenth century of 
our era. If we turn to the great classics of 
antiquity we find almost an equal paucity of mate- 
rial from the earliest times. Of Homer there is 
no complete copy earlier than the thirteenth cen- 
tury of our era, though fragments have come 
down from the sixth century, and in 1891 a frag- 
ment on papyrus was found in Egypt, dating as 
early as the first century B. c. Of Herodotus 
there is no manuscript earlier than the ninth cen- 
tury, and of the fifteen known to exist the major- 
ity are later than the fifteenth century. One 
Plato is dated before the ninth century, and a 
fragment of the Phaedo was found recently, and 
one of the lost plays of Euripides, " The Antiope," 
which were written not later than the third cen- 
tury B. c. One copy of u Virgil " goes back to 

119 



120 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

the fourth century A. D., and a fragment of Cicero 
to the same period. Such is the general state of 
the evidence for the classics. But for the New 
Testament we have two splendid manuscripts, one 
of them complete, of the fourth century, ten of 
the fifth, twenty-four of the sixth, and over three 
thousand in all, 1 though in this number are 
included codices that are mere fragments. 
Besides these copies of the text itself there are 
many other important witnesses in the translations 
of early times, and also in the quotations and 
references found in the works of the early Chris- 
tian Fathers. It is evident, therefore, that we 
have far more evidence for the text of our New 
Testament, than for any other writings of antiq- 
uity whatsoever; and when we add that upon 
these abundant materials have been concentrated 
for the last hundred years the efforts of men of 
largest learning and most acute critical ability, 
we may feel more sure of our accurate knowledge 
of what the original documents must have been, 
than in the case of any other literary productions 
of ancient times. 

These great documents of the Christian Faith 
have come to us from many places, but some 
localities have been found especially rich in them. 
Alexandria in Egypt, as might have been ex- 
pected from its history as one of the earliest cen- 

1 Scrivener's " Plain Introduction " reckons 3,791. See Vol. I., p. 8. 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 121 

ters of Christian learning, has furnished many 
manuscripts, while some that have been found 
elsewhere are the product of Alexandrine learning 
and skill. The manuscripts made at Constanti- 
nople, sometimes under the patronage of the 
Byzantine emperors, were famous for the beauty 
of their text and the regal elegance of their 
illuminations. Other works come from the 
islands of the iEgeau Sea and from Cyprus. 
Three rocky promontories extend southward from 
the coast of Macedonia, and the most eastern one 
of these, or Mount Athos, is especially famous as 
a locality producing manuscripts of great value to 
the Christian world. The rocky heights of this 
headland were the site of more than twenty 
important monasteries, over five hundred churches 
and chapels, and multitudes of cells of anchorites. 
Even now the monkish population is very numer- 
ous. Here during many centuries the time has 
been passed in religious occupations, and among 
these none has been so important as the produc- 
tion of books. Another celebrated group of 
monasteries is in Calabria, the most southern 
province of Italy, where nearly fifty religious 
establishments supplied the churches and libraries 
of Rome and Naples, Florence, Venice, and 
Milan. Still another group of these religious 
communities is in the Nitrian Desert, in the North 
of Egypt, whence many treasures have come into 



122 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

the possession of European scholars. But perhaps 
the most famous of all localities where manu- 
scripts have been discovered, is the Convent of 
St. Catherine, 1 at Mount Sinai, the scene of the 
romantic finding of the great Sinaitic manuscript 
by Tischendorf, which we have yet to narrate in 
full. It is a place of famed sanctity, dating from 
a very early period in the Christian era, and link- 
ing together by its traditions the earliest scenes 
of Old Testament history and the latest acquisi- 
tions of the New Testament Scriptures. It is, 
indeed, a strange providence which ordained the 
giving of the old Law from this awful peak, amid 
the tumultuous scenes of earthquake and fire, and 
also that upon this very spot should be preserved 
through the peace and calm of ages one of the 
two oldest copies and the only complete uncial 
of the New Covenant which Christendom to-day 
possesses. 

Hardly a monastery existed which did not have 
its scriptorium, or writing room, attached to its 
library, and here through the quiet hours the 
patient toilers wrought at their task. They were 
not so strictly bound by rules for copyists as were 
the scribes in copying the Old Testament, accord- 
ing to the tract Sopherim, as a former page has 
narrated ; but their work was deemed to be of a 
sacred character, and it was done with the utmost 

Frontispiece. 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 1 23 

reverence. Probably even in the apostolic days 
the copyists were men who had had their train- 
ing in the Jewish schools, and after their conver- 
sion to Christianity found their best employment 
in transcribing the epistles, and other books 
meant for the use of the churches. At the very 
first there was probably no Christian guild of 
transcribers, and yet we know that few of the 
New Testament Scriptures were written by their 
authors themselves. Paul's scribe was named 
Tertius (Rom. 16 : 32), and the letter to the 
Colossians, as well as some other epistles, bears a 
subscription to the effect that Paul wrote that 
part of his letter with his own hand. To the 
Galatians Paul says : u Ye see with what large 
letters I have written unto you with my own 
hand" (Gal. 6 : n), thereby calling attention to 
his peculiar chirography as a mark of the genuine- 
ness of the document, and showing, as Bllicott 
thinks, that in this epistle an exception to the 
general rule was indicated, the whole letter having 
been thus the autograph of the apostle. But after 
a little time this work of the copyist grew so 
important that a particular class or profession 
had it in charge, and two branches of the calling 
arose, the tachygraphers or quick writers, taking 
down swiftly the dictation of the author, and the 
kalligr ciphers, or fair-hand writers, writing out 
more slowly, and in beautiful text, what had been 



124 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

recorded with less pains at first. As time went 
on the work of these scribes was largely extended ; 
and as the monasteries and other religious estab- 
lishments became the repositories of learning, the 
classics of antiquity as well as ecclesiastical 
works were the objects of care, and thus Christi- 
anity preserved for the world also the great liter- 
ary productions of the ancient heathen times. 

The office of transcriber became of the highest 
esteem. It was not thought beneath the dignity 
of the highest officials of the church to devote 
themselves to making elegant copies of the sacred 
books. Special privileges were granted to those 
whose hands must be kept delicate for their exact- 
ing task, and they were often excused from the 
coarser employments of hewing wood, drawing 
water, or planting the gardens of the convents. 
It is pathetic to read in these later days of the 
pious care and affection with which the work was 
done and its results treasured, and no one can 
look at the stained and tattered pages of the old- 
est manuscripts, or turn the later leaves of dainty 
missals and splendidly illuminated Bibles, without 
having the mental picture arise before him of 
those still scriptoriums in which each task was 
begun with a prayer, and sometimes the Divine 
blessing invoked upon even* stroke of the pen 
and brush. As we proceed to describe many of 
these manuscripts, the words of the Friar Pacificus 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 1 25 

iii Longfellow's " Golden Legend " will recnr to 
the mind : 

It is growing dark ! Yet one line more 
And then my work for the day is o'er. 
I come again to the name of the Lord ! 
Ere I that awful name record 
That is spoken so lightly among men, 
Let me pause awhile and wash my pen ; 
Pure from blemish and blot must it be 
When it writes that word of mystery ! 

Thus have I labored on and on 

Nearly through the Gospel of John. 

Can it be that from the lips 

Of this same gentle evangelist, 

That Christ himself perhaps has kissed, 

Came the dread Apocalypse ! 

It has a very awful look 

As it stands there at the end of the book 

Like the sun in an eclipse. 

Ah me ! when I think of that vision divine, 

Think of writing it, line by line, 

I stand in awe of the terrible curse 

Like the trump of doom in the closing verse 

God forgive me, if ever I 

Take aught from the book of that prophecy, 

Lest my part too should be taken away 

From the book of Life on the Judgment Day. 



There, now, is an initial letter ! 

Saint Ulric himself never made a better ! 

Finished down to the leaf and the snail, 

Down to the eyes on the peacock's tail ! 

And now as I turn the volume over, 

And see what lies between cover and cover, 



126 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

What treasures of art these pages hold, 

All ablaze with crimson and gold, 

God forgive me ! I seem to feel 

A certain satisfaction steal 

Into my heart and into my brain, 

As if my talent had not lain 

Wrapped in a napkin and all in vain. 

Yes, I might almost say to the Lord, 

Here is a copy of thy word 

Written out with much toil and pain ; 

Take it, O Lord, and let it be 

As something I have done for thee. 

Sometimes the completion of the book would 
be followed by the signature of the copyist, and a 
sentence or two descriptive of the circumstances 
in which he wrote. Apparently they were not 
all gentle spirits who thus toiled patiently or 
impatiently in the cloisters, for some anathema 
like the following is often found : ' c Whosoever 
removeth this volume from this same mentioned 
convent, may the anger of the L,ord overtake him 
in this world and in the next, to all eternity. 
Amen." Or in another case: "He who shall 
have stolen or sold this book, or in any manner 
withdrawn it from its place, or he who shall have 
been its buyer, may he be forever in the company 
of Judas, Pilate, and Caiaphas. Amen, amen. 
Fiat, fiat." Another subscription shows the gen- 
tler feeling of the transcriber : " This book 
belongs to Daniel, a secular presbyter and visitor 
of the province of Amida, who gave diligence 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 12 7 

and procured it for the benefit of himself, and of 
those who, possessed with the same object of love 
of divine instruction, may approach it, and desire 
to profit their lives by the truth that is in it. 
But the poor Simeon, presbyter and a recluse, 
who is in the holy convent of my Lord, Symeon 
of Cartanim, transcribed it. May every one 
therefore who asks for it, that he may read in it 
or write from it, for the sake of the love of God, 
pray for him who gave diligence and obtained it, 
and for the scribe, that he may find mercy in the 
day of judgment, like the thief who was on the 
right hand (of the cross), through the prayers of 
all the saints, and more particularly of the holy 
and glorious and perpetual Virgin, the mother of 
God, Mary. Amen, and amen and amen." The 
celebrated Curetonian Gospels in Syriac close 
with a prayer, " Son of the Living God, at the 
hour of thy judgment spare the sinner who wrote 
this ! " Another manuscript must have been 
transcribed with unusual difficulty, owing to the 
defect of the copyist, for he signs himself " the 
one-eyed Cyprian." Still another document, 
quoted by Scrivener, bears the couplet in Greek, 
of which the following is an equivalent : 

The hand that wrote now moulders in the tomb ; 
The book shall bide until the day of doom. 

It is difficult to conceive the labor of thus pro- 
ducing books in the ancient times. Our giant 



128 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

presses turn off thousands of pages from stereo- 
typed plates in a brief time and with perfect 
accuracy ; but if the reader will try the simplest 
experiment he will see how tedious was the copy- 
ist's task and how surely it must have been 
marked with errors, which no care could wholly 
prevent. Try to reproduce one page of print, 
writing with pen and ink in capital letters the 
text before the eye. It will be found a wonder 
that the manuscripts of the New Testament are 
so free from blemish as they are. A man might 
have the most scrupulous conscience about his 
work and be most skilled in its performance, but 
he would be a man for all that, and liable to the 
infirmities of the flesh. Weariness, inattention, 
interruption would be sure to come even to the 
most faithful, and so we find wrong words written, 
sentences omitted or repeated, and many instances 
of errors that bear all the marks of mere inad- 
vertence ; while in some cases the mistake cannot 
be laid to inadvertence, but was plainly due to 
the purpose of the copyist to support some party 
doctrine, or elucidate some passage that the apos- 
tolic writer had thought plain enough. The 
latter case finds an instance in the famous passage 
concerning the Three Witnesses (i John 5 : 7, 8), 
where the words, " in heaven, the Father, the 
Word, and the Holy Ghost : and these three are 
one. And there are three that bear witness in 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 1 29 

earth" are to be omitted, having been supplied 
for controversial purposes ; while an example of 
inadvertence is found in the Revelation (10 : 10), 
where the copyist omitted a passage in the cele- 
brated Codex of Ephraem, though the omission 
does not appear in our English Bibles. If, how- 
ever, we had had no manuscript save the Codex 
of Ephraem from which to translate, that passage 
would have been sadly mixed in our version, for 
after a part of the tenth verse the copyist sud- 
denly changed to the last verse of chapter seven, 
whence the text runs smoothly on to the end of 
the fourth verse of the eighth chapter, when there 
is again a transition to the middle of the third 
verse of the eleventh chapter, making the passage 
read : 

4 ' And it was in my mouth sweet as honey, and 
as soon tears from their eyes. And when he 
opened the seventh seal there followed a silence in 
heaven about the space of half an hour. And I 
saw the seven angels which stand before God ; and 
there were given unto them seven trumpets. And 
another angel came and stood over the altar, hav- 
ing a golden censer ; and there was given unto 
him much incense, that he should add it unto the 
prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar 
which was before the throne. And the smoke of 
the incense, with the prayers of the saints went 
up before God a thousand two hundred and three- 



130 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

score days, clothed in sackcloth." What was the 
matter with this copyist we cannot say. The pas- 
sage reminds us of a similar inadvertence, where 
a repetition instead of an omission occurs, in the 
Old Testament (1 Chron. 8 and 9). There the eye 
of the copyist noted the words, " these dwelt at 
Jerusalem," in chapter nine, verse thirty-four, 
when he ceased working perhaps at evening and 
fixed it in his mind where to begin the next morn- 
ing. But when he returned to his task his eye 
caught the words, " these dwelt at Jerusalem," in 
verse twenty-eight of chapter eight, and he began 
with verse twenty-nine and calmly went on with 
the dry list of names which he had copied the 
day before, until he came to his senses at verse 
thirty-eight, when he found his proper place and 
began the tenth chapter ; all of which appears in 
the English version. 

Although the autographs of the Christian 
Scriptures were doubtless all in the form of rolls, 
the only manuscripts that are extant are in the 
form of books. We know from a word of the 
Ivatin poet, Martial, that until the latter half of 
the first century the old custom of writing in rolls 
was prevalent everywhere, and that in Martial's 
time the later, or book form, was just beginning 
to be used, but was regarded as a great novelty. 

It is evident from the labor and care bestowed 
on the production of books, that they were valued 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 131 

most highly. In the monasteries the monks were 
not suffered to remove the volumes from the libra- 
ries to their cells except at certain seasons, as dur- 
ing Lent. Sometimes it was prescribed that the 
book should be wrapped in a handkerchief or 
cloth when not in use, and it is perhaps such an 
instance that received illustration when Tischen- 
dorf discovered the great Sinaitic Codex, which 
a monk had in his cell wrapped in a red cloth 
when Teschendorf first saw it. But if these 
books were deemed precious by those who made 
them, or in those early days used them, their 
value has grown immensely as time has passed, 
and the science of textual criticism has shown 
how indispensable they are for our knowledge of 
the Bible. Large prices have been paid for them. 
Imperial gifts to the Convent of St. Catharine 
purchased the Sinaitic Codex for the library in St. 
Petersburg ; and although many manuscripts have 
been gotten by way of gifts, or at small prices, 
from owners who did not understand their real 
value, it would now require more than imperial 
gifts to win them away from their European posses- 
sors. They are the proudest treasures of national 
museums and university libraries and private pa- 
trons of learning. 

Naturally the great value attached to these 
documents has stimulated the desire for gain la- 
tent in the human breast, and many persons 1111- 



12)2, THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

worthy to be engaged in such a work have devoted 
themselves to the business of securing such docu- 
ments and offering them for sale. Nor have all 
such efforts been of an honorable character. 
Frauds have been attempted, which have come to 
be of recognized value themselves as going far to 
establish our confidence in the infallible judgment 
of the great librarians and scholars upon whom 
the attempt to deceive has been made, for no such 
effort has yet been successful in any important 
instance. No bolder attempts in this direction 
have been made than those which rendered the 
name of Constantine Simonides infamous, espe- 
cially in connection with the Sinaitic manuscript. 
This man, in 1856, sought to palm off upon the 
Academy of Berlin a manuscript purporting to 
be the " History of Egypt," by Uranios, son of 
Anaximenes. As a work of the kalligraphic art 
it was perfect ; but the careful study of the subject 
matter revealed its false character. The work 
was bought for twenty-five hundred thalers, how- 
ever, before the deceit was discovered, and a few 
leaves of the very important document, the 
"Shepherd of Hennas," were also purchased. 
Then came a message from Professor L,ykurgos, 
of Athens, that probably both the manuscripts 
were spurious, and Professor Tischendorf at once 
gave them critical examination and pronounced 
them false. Simonides next appeared at the Bod- 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 1 33 

leian Library in Oxford, England, and produced 
two or three genuine manuscripts of no very great 
value, and belonging to the tenth, twelfth, and 
thirteenth centuries. He then unrolled with 
much apparent anxiety a few fragments of vel- 
lum, which bore an uncial text of most venerable 
appearance. The librarian carefully inspected 
the crumbling leaves of vellum, then smelt of 
them, and gave them back with the single re- 
mark that they dated from the middle of the 
nineteenth century ! The baffled Simonides gath- 
ered up his wares with many protestations, and 
departed, going straight to the railway station, 
whence he sped to the house of a well-known 
country gentlemen in Worcestershire, where he 
disposed of the whole lot at a satisfactory price. 
The most extraordinary performance of this Si- 
monides was doubtless prompted by a spirit of re- 
venge. It has been said that Tischendorf had been 
the means of detecting the fraud perpetrated in 
Berlin, and some other incidents had also brought 
him into collision with Simonides. No sooner 
had Tischendorf published his earliest fac similes 
of the newly discovered "Codex Sinaiticus," in 
i860, than Simonides declared that Tischendorf 
himself was at last deceived; that he, Simonides, 
had written the whole document ! He appealed 
to his wonderful skill as a kalligrapher and said 
that while he was still a youth he had been em- 

M 



134 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

ployed by his uncle, Benedict, head of the monas- 
tery of Panteleemon on Mount Athos, to make in 
manuscript from a printed Moscow Bible, a copy 
of the whole Scriptures, which might be worthy 
of presentation to the Russian Emperor Nicholas, 
in acknowledgment of benefits conferred upon the 
monastery. He had gone through the Old and the 
New Testaments, the Epistle of Barnabas, and a 
part of the "Shepherd of Hennas," when his 
uncle died, his materials failed, and the plan to 
add the whole of the Apostolic Fathers had to be 
relinquished. The volume was presented by him 
later to Constantine, formerly Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople and Archbishop of Sinai, who had 
recognized the favor by giving him twenty-five 
thousand piastres, or not far from one thousand 
two hundred dollars. The book had been given 
by the patriarch to the Convent of St. Catharine, 
where Simonides had seen it in 1844, an( i again 
in 1852, and where Tischendorf discovered it in 
1859. -^ was a marvelous story, requiring the 
most colossal impudence, and yet so cunningly 
planned, so boldly supported, with the manual 
skill of its author so well known, that for a 
time it found credit in some quarters. But its 
refutation was easy. The monks at Sinai, includ- 
ing the librarian who was in charge at the time 
covered by the story, gave testimony that they 
had never seen Simonides, and that the book had 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 1 35 

been catalogued from the earliest times. Accord- 
ing to Simonides himself, he could not have been 
more than fifteen years old in 1839, when he be- 
gan the task, and it was shown that to have fin- 
ished it at the time designated he must have 
written at least twenty thousand large and separate 
uncial letters every day, which was simply incred- 
ible. Moreover, the very mistakes of the codex 
show that it must have been copied from another 
manuscript, and not from a printed Bible, as for 
instance where omitted words are in several cases 
just enough to fill up a line in an old papyrus 
document, showing that the copyist had a roll or 
book like his own lying before him. It is not 
necessary to pursue the subject farther, except to 
say that the manuscript was easily and entirely 
vindicated from such imputations. Simonides 
was reported to have perished of leprosy in 1867 ; 
but two years later he was seen in St. Peters- 
burg, where he was still active under an assumed 
name. 

Still another attempt at fraud is yet fresh in the 
memory. In 1881, a dealer named Shapira, who 
had been of real service in securing valuable 
documents in the East, brought to Europe several 
manuscripts, among them a Moabite copy of the 
book of Deuteronomy, which was apparently 
genuine, bearing every mark of age and truthful- 
ness. Several weeks elapsed, during which the 



136 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

news spread over Europe and America, and the 
learned and religious public was thrown into great 
excitement, for, if genuine, the manuscript was 
beyond question the oldest in existence containing 
a biblical text. But after careful examination it 
was decided that the document did not belong to 
800 b. c, but to a date as late as 1880 A. d. In 
the following week Shapira committed suicide. 
In all probability he had been deceived himself, 
was of honorable intention, and could not sustain 
the odium which he felt would be his in view of 
his connection with the fraud. The words of . 
Scrivener are doubtless true : " With respect to 
biblical manuscripts we may confidently assert 
that there are fifty persons at least in England 
who, on internal grounds alone, from their inti- 
mate knowledge of what a genuine record ought 
to and must contain, would at once detect with 
perfect ease any — the most highly finished — imi- 
tation that dishonest skill could execute, provided 
the document extended beyond the length of a 
very few lines." * Probably at this day the num- 
ber of scholars in England thus competent is 
greater than when these words were written, while 
America is not now without many persons who 
would be equally discerning. The ancient docu- 
ments cannot be successfully simulated, and even 
if they could, our genuine materials are so rich 

1 " Six Lectures," p. 22. 



MATERIALS FOR NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 1 37 

and so fully known, that the imposture would do 
little harm. 

The invention of printing in 1452 may be con- 
sidered as the close of the period of the production 
of manuscripts, though some books in the ancient 
form were made after that date. In 1455, the first 
printed Bible appeared in Latin, from the press of 
Gutenberg, in three folio volumes, with two 
columns of thirty-six lines each to a page. The 
text imitated that of the earlier manuscripts, and 
was printed on vellum and illuminated by hand. 
The rapid multiplication of books by Gutenberg, 
and by his former associates Faust and Schoeffer, 
their exact uniformity and low price excited the 
greatest wonder, and led to the belief that there 
was some magic in the case, so that the printers 
escaped the penalty of being in league with the 
devil only by revealing the processes of their art. 
Thus the secrets of the new invention were ex- 
posed, and a new era in the production of books 
was introduced. The work of the transcriber and 
illuminator did not pass away at once. Many 
manuscripts were still made, and many printed 
volumes were splendidly adorned by the work of 
the hand, but gradually the supremacy of the new 
art asserted itself, and the modern period of book- 
making was established. 



IX 

CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MANUSCRIPTS. 

THE manuscripts of the New Testament thus 
far found are divided into classes, and dis- 
tinguished by certain marks whereby they are 
known to all scholars. 

Two great divisions are made according to the 
form of the characters employed, and are called 
Uncials (inch), and Cursives or Minuscules, the 
former being written in large capital letters 
throughout, and the latter in a small, running, or 
cursive hand. 

The uncials are about one hundred and ten in 
number, and none of them were written later than 
the tenth century ; of the cursives, however, 
there is a large number, and none were written 
earlier than the ninth century. So that the char- 
acter of the manuscript in this respect at once 
determines the period of its writing, though there 
is wide opportunity for judgment in deciding its 
place in that period. 

Uncial manuscripts generally have no breaks 

between their words, few of the letters trespass 

upon the margins of the page, and words are often 

arbitrarily divided at the ends of lines. A cor- 

138 



CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS 139 

responding example in English may easily be 
given, and if it is remembered that four of these 
columns, or three, would usually appear on a page, 
as in the Sinaitic and Vatican codices respectively, 
the appearance of a page of uncial writing may 
be easily conceived ; the example is from the 
second Gospel at the beginning as it appears in 
the Vatican manuscript. 

BE GINN INGOFTHEGOSPELO 

FJSCHTSONOFGDASITWASW 

RITTENINTHEPROPHETISAI 

AHBEHOEDISENDMYMESSE 

NGERBEFORETHYFACEWH 

OSHALLPREPARETHYWAYT 

HEVOICEOFONECRYINGINT 

HEDESERTPREPAREYETH 

EWAY 

Gradually attempts at ornamentation appear, at 
first an enlargement of initials, and ornamented 
head-pieces and tail-pieces at the beginning and 
end of books. Occasional breaks in the text were 
introduced ; punctuation, very rare at first, became 
more frequent ; and other attempts to facilitate the 
reading were made. The tendency to write more 
rapidly resulted in the cursive style, with the 
employment of small letters, but these on account 
of their later date and more rapid production are 
of less value, generally speaking, than the uncials. 



140 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Many manuscripts of both classes are of the great- 
est elegance. It was not infrequently the fancy 
to dye the delicate vellum a rich red or purple, 
and then to write the text in silver or colored 
inks, and the so-called purple manuscripts are 
sumptuous folios, sometimes, as in the case of the 
Codex Rossanensis, illustrated with full-page 
sketches of scenes from the Gospels. 

Many manuscripts, some of which are of much 
importance for criticism, were prepared for service 
books, and contained only a part of the Script- 
ures, especially such passages as were appointed 
to be read upon certain days, so that they appear 
without regard to their proper order in the New 
Testament. These are Lectionaries, so-called, 
both uncial and cursive ; and they were Evangel- 
istaria, if they contained the lessons from the 
Gospels, or Praxapostoloi, if they contained the 
readings from the Acts and epistles. The former 
are about three times more numerous than the 
latter. 

Sometimes entire copies of the New Testament 
were made by bringing together different manu- 
scripts of various parts, made perhaps by various 
hands, and at widely separated times and places. 
The fact therefore that a copy is entire does not 
necessarily show that the text of all its parts is of 
equal age and value. One part may have been 
made most accurately from an excellent prototype, 



CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS 141 

while another part may have been carelessly writ- 
ten from a poor copy. But these characteristics 
easily explain themselves, and the critical scholar 
has little difficulty in assigning its true origin and 
value to each part of the document. 

The mode of writing, which left no spaces 
between the words and sentences and had no 
punctuation to aid the reader, was found at a very 
early period to be unnecessarily difficult. The 
oldest attempt at divisions in the text is that 
which appears in the Vatican manuscript, and 
the breaks occur irregularly and where there is 
some break in the sense of the passage. Hardly 
less ancient, and possibly to be ascribed to so 
early a writer as Tatian the harmonist, whose 
" Diatessaron" has recently been discovered, is 
the division of the Gospels into larger chapters 
or titles (rtrXot\ so called because appended to the 
numeral of its designation is a title or summary of 
contents, generally in a table preceding each Gos- 
pel, or at the top and bottom of the pages, or even 
in both ways in the same manuscript. A reference 
to the illustration facing page 138 will show the 
" titles " preceding the Gospel of Mark in the 
Alexandrine manuscript. In the same illustration 
appear the marginal rubrics designating the Am- 
monian-Busebian sections, yet another method 
of dividing the text, but employed for the entirely 
different purpose of indicating parallel passages 



142 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

in the other Gospels, just as the marginal refer- 
ences in our English Bibles are used. Ammonius 
of Alexandria, about A. D. 220, originally adopted 
this method of harmonizing the Gospels, and the 
plan was afterward followed by Eusebius. Am- 
monius selected the Gospel of Matthew as his 
standard, and in that Gospel three hundred and 
fifty-five sections are marked, two hundred and 
thirty-six in Mark, three hundred and forty-two 
in I/uke, and two hundred and thirty-two in John. 
The sections were designated by letters of the 
Greek alphabet having a fixed numerical equiva- 
lent. To complete the arrangement, ten canons 
or lists were made, to which another letter placed 
under the designation of the section referred. In 
these canons all the parallel passages were classi- 
fied, the first canon containing those common to 
all four Gospels •, the second, places in which the 
first three agree ; the third, passages in Matthew, 
Ivuke, and John ; the fourth, those in Matthew, 
Mark, and John ; the fifth to the ninth, contain- 
ing those common to any two, and the tenth con- 
taining those found only in one. The margin of 
a manuscript would then have the Greek letters 
of its section opposite a given passage, and be- 
neath these the letter signifying the proper canon ; 
the first, if the passage occurred in all four Gos- 
pels ; the second, if found in a particular two, and 
so on. For example, the illustration used by 



CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS 143 

Scrivener in his " Plain Introduction " is from the 
Cotton fragment of the Gospels, where in the 
margin of John 15 : 20, we find the Greek letters 
thus arranged : p ^ . This means that this section 
of John is one hundred thirty-nine, the numeri- 
cal equivalent of the upper letters, while the 
lower letter stands for three, the third canon. 
Referring to that canon we find the reference to 
this section of John, and joined with it are the 
signs which show that John 15 : 20 is parallel to 
Matthew 10 : 24 and Luke 6 : 40. These mar- 
ginal references were generally written in Ver- 
million as prescribed by Eusebius, though blue or 
green is occasionally found. The great advan- 
tage of such a system of notation is evident. Still 
another peculiarity was introduced by Buthalius, 
a deacon of Alexandria, who published the epis- 
tles of Paul in A. d. 458, and afterward the Acts 
and general epistles. Besides several other de- 
vices, he marked every fiftieth line by its appro- 
priate number, and these were called stichoi 
(errywt), and not only aided the reader, but became 
a means of reckoning the amount of work done 
by the copyist, just as the ems of a modern printer 
are reckoned. The same term stichoi was applied 
later to another division of the text called comma 
or colo?i, which formed a clause according to the 
sense, very much as the modern verses are em- 
ployed. But this broke up the text, occasioned 



144 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

many spaces, and was too cumbersome to be uni- 
versally adopted. Various other methods of divi- 
sion and notation were used, but need not be 
enumerated here. It should only be added that 
none of these ancient divisions appear in our 
modern Bibles. The present chapters were prob- 
ably introduced by Stephen Langton in 1228 in 
the Latin Vulgate, whence they were transferred 
to the printed Greek editions and so into the 
English version, while the verses were set off by 
Robert Stephen, while journeying from Paris to 
Geneva, for his edition of the Greek Testament 
published in the year 1551. 1 

It will be evident that the age of any document 
may be approximately determined by the presence 
or absence of these peculiarities, as well as by 
many other signs. It has already been said that 
the simple division into the uncials and cursives 
indicates two nearly distinct periods. Similarly, 
no codex which has the Eusebian canons can be 
older than his time. Stichometry would show 
that the document possessing it was written later 
than 458, the year when Euthalius introduced the 
system in his edition of St. Paul's epistles. The 
mere materials of which a manuscript consists 
bear their witness to its age and the simplicity of 
the text indicates a proportionally early time. If 

1 See an exhaustive paper in " Critical Essays," by Ezra Abbot, 
p. 464. 



[< A iftM o r\*M>\ Kuii t u> r>M e r a utr- (Mij-i^ -r 1 1 ccytVpR.*! iaI? m\ 

k CVClM Uft ■ A > I C A H M J±> OH<gt I A QJVv* *- » • ~ _. /• 

/T^^a^.TOT*^^ >6-r itfi>?ff^f •^'WWfiBTft^ WJT 

CVllAAt'lUlG-t-K .WMA*CKA A I AICA AIM OkllU>tJH*IAVt1 l°<<P 1 
, I IkY'koiOI^XiCi fct? < £rf!KOCia-Hr ) IAAHO^IAJ-£p-l» < M lUJK'I'IrWA 



, Trf A MM' ACD <l > < ' AtMOasSTIff C. 1 1AVC a A>» a/i< <T<>V <VX XlO llb*?*J*c: 

t4 lAI'AI'rOA* <"'AN > ,M'.VK^Vl^AACI<(.'f*til,VO»«.'c:f>y TKCmiO'l'lH;.* 

g,dLjTcp < i m^A* ^V^B'S*** r A ' ' "*^3 ,< *' Mr « ! -**-** &** *,*£ *#** 



Codex Ephraemi. C. 

(A Palimpsest. 1 Tim. 3:9-4: 14.) 

Page 145. 



CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS 145 

there are several columns on a page after the 
manner employed in the earlier papyrus rolls the 
manuscript may be adjudged to a period pretty 
near to that of the rolls themselves. Slight pecu- 
liarities in the letters and the use of additional 
marks that would quite escape the attention of an 
ordinary reader are enough to betray valuable 
secrets to the skilled eye, and by such means addi- 
tions to the original page by second, third, fourth, 
and even more scribes are detected. 

An extremely important class of manuscripts is 
found in the palimpsests, or documents that have 
been twice written. As time elapsed, and the 
supplies of vellum became scarce and dear while 
perhaps the reverence for the text of the Bible 
somewhat decreased, it was not unusual to erase 
as far as possible the first writing upon the vellum 
sheets and then to cover the page again with a 
later work, as appears in the case of the most 
famous palimpsest, C, where the ancient biblical 
text was erased and covered with the sermons of 
Ephraem Syrus. The vegetable ink used in the 
early times could be nearly obliterated — the word 
palimpsest means rubbed away again — and the new 
text stood out nearly as distinct as if the vellum 
had not been previously used. But in process of 
time the action of the atmosphere brought out 
the older text again with more or less clearness, 
and so the vellum bore two texts, the one written 



I 



146 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

over the other and both to be deciphered only 
with difficulty. Sometimes even a triple writing 
is found. Where the ancient writing remained 
unusually obscure scholars have often attempted, 
usually with success, to restore it by the use of 
chemicals, and thus important aids to criticism 
have been secured. The palimpsests extant are 
comparatively few, but of great value. It almost 
seems as if the reappearance of their ancient texts 
was the mute protest of the vellum and ink against 
the blotting out of the sacred truths that they 
once declared; the eloquent though mute assertion 
that the word of God shall outlast every other. 
But that a multitude of precious documents 
have thus been lost is beyond doubt, for the prac- 
tice by the end of the seventh century had be- 
come so destructive to valuable literary works of 
all kinds, that a synod issued a decree forbidding 
the obliteration of biblical writings. 

Of the uncial manuscripts a hundred and ten 
are known already, and the number is likely to 
increase with new discoveries in a time when 
archaeological research in all departments is press- 
ing. We do not attempt to give a list of them 
here, as such a list would be of use only to schol- 
ars, who will readily find such material for their 
need. We may refer however to Scrivener's 
" Plain Introduction," fourth edition ; to Mitchell's 
" Critical Handbook," for much valuable material, 






CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS 1 47 

though the lists of documents must be revised ; 
and to the excellent little book upon the " Textual 
Criticism of the New Testament," by Prof. B. B. 
Warfield, D. d. Of these uncial manuscripts 
sixty-eight have the Gospels or parts of them ; 
sixteen have the Acts and general epistles ; twenty- 
one contain the epistles of Paul ; five have the 
Apocalypse. These are all indicated by the use 
of capital letters, as the Hebrew K for the Sinaitic 
manuscript, B for the Vatican Codex No. 1209, 
A for the Codex Alexandrinus, C for the Codex 
of Ephraem, etc. 

The cursive manuscripts ranging in date from 
the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, are very 
numerous, but of comparatively small value, 
although some of them form remarkable excep- 
tions to this rule. Only about one hundred and 
fifty have been fully collated. They are desig- 
nated by the use of numerals. Very important 
among the cursives are a few that will be described 
more fully upon a future page. 

As for the ancient translations of the New Tes- 
tament, many have come down to us, and at 
least fragments of them are open to our study. 
These versions are especially valuable, because 
many of them were made at a date prior to that 
of any extant Greek copy of the text, and there- 
fore bear witness to a text considerably earlier 
than any document in our possession. Syriac, 



148 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Coptic, Armenian, Sahidic, Latin, and many 
other versions are extant, and while their texts 
are not to be relied upon as absolutely correct, one 
version is a valuable correction to another, so that 
their testimony is very strong. Used in connec- 
tion with each other and with the Greek manu- 
scripts, they present an array of evidence that is 
very valuable. Versions are cited by small letters 
of the alphabet, and abbreviations. 

Akin to the evidence of versions is that given 
by the early quotations from the Scriptures by 
the church Fathers, and although such quotations 
are generally somewhat free and give every 
appearance of being from memory, yet they find 
important place among critical materials. Such 
quotations are indicated in the critical references 
by a few letters of the names, as Porph for Por- 
phyry ; Epiph for Bpiphanius, Hier for Jerome or 
Hieronymus, etc. 

Manuscripts of the Christian Scriptures are 
deposited in all the countries of Europe, where 
scholars can have ready access to them. The 
largest collections are in Italy, England, France, 
and Turkey. It is strange that Germany, having 
fewer possessions of this kind than either France, 
Italy, or England, should have done more than 
any country except England in the discovery and 
critical use of them. In the fourth edition of 
Scrivener's "Introduction" the followingf state- 



CLASSES AND CHARACTERISTICS 149 

ment of the Greek manuscripts according to 
countries is made, rearranged however in the 
order of their numbers : Turkey (Oriental Monas- 
teries), seven hundred and twenty-four ; Italy, six 
hundred and forty-four ; British Empire, four hun- 
dred and thirty-eight ; France, three hundred and 
twenty-four ; Palestine, two hundred and sixty ; 
Greece, one hundred and ninety- seven ; Germany, 
one hundred and forty ; Russia, one hundred and 
four ; Spain, thirty-four ; Egypt, twenty-six. 
Smaller numbers are in Belgium, Denmark, 
Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, the United States, 
while the present locality of at least thirty known 
manuscripts cannot be given. 



X 

THE SCIENCE) AND THE CRITICS 

ALTHOUGH the science of textual criticism 
is of comparatively modern origin, it would 
be a mistake to suppose that it had no substantial 
foundations in antiquity. It has been shown that 
the age in which the New Testament writings 
were coming into being was not an uncritical age, 
as is so often somewhat flippantly asserted, and 
that in all matters of genuineness and authenticity 
the new Scriptures were subjected even then to 
discriminating scholarship, so that after three 
centuries of patient study and proof in the appli- 
cation of the biblical materials to life, both the 
question of inspiration and that of historic relia- 
bility were reasonably and satisfactorily settled. 
But many of the minds that were actively 
engaged upon these questions had had special 
training in matters of verbal criticism. Some of 
the keenest writers were of the school of Alex- 
andria, where especial attention had long been 
bestowed upon this very branch of study, particu- 
larly with reference to the Greek classics. We 
are not surprised, therefore, to find many of the 
Christian Fathers engaged in weighing the evi- 
150 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 151 

dence for a pure text of the Scriptures, not indeed 
according to modern methods, nor with that thor- 
oughness which alone satisfies the scholar to-day, 
but with a degree of efficiency which proves that 
their eyes were not blind to the importance of 
such study. The quotations of the earliest 
Fathers, to which reference was made in the last 
chapter, show that while they often quoted very 
freely, and with far more reference to the spirit 
than to the letter of a passage, they yet studied 
the documents in their possession with scrupulous 
care, comparing one with another and noting 
their differences, and weighing the evidence for 
the truth not only of every entire work, but of 
every reading of the various copies as well. Ori- 
gen, for example, well called the " Father of 
Criticism," was a discriminating student and edi- 
tor of the Septuagint, and his labors upon the 
text of the New Testament were the work of a 
trained scholar. Busebius was a man of great 
learning, and he spared no pains or expense in 
journeys and the collection of materials. We 
have already spoken of the work of Jerome, both 
upon the Old Testament and the New. Indeed, 
the very copies of the Scriptures in manuscript 
that have come down to our day give indisputable 
evidence of the desire to secure a text that should 
be full and complete, as nearly perfect as possible, 
for they are covered in many instances with mar- 



153 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

ginal notes, corrections, and suggestions, often 
entirely erroneous, but showing the desire to 
reach the truth if possible. When the Bible was 
first printed, the text used for the purpose was the 
Latin of the Vulgate, which of course went back 
to Jerome's use of the materials at his hand, and 
with very considerable variations represented the 
Bible as Jerome translated it ; but as we traced 
the work of Jerome we saw what difficulty he had 
in determining the text, and we find it impossible 
to be content with the results of his work, and 
least of all with its condition at the beginning of 
what may be termed the modern period marked 
by the invention of printing. In the year 1502, a 
new attempt was made to prepare an edition of 
the whole Bible in the original Hebrew and 
Greek, together with the Chaldee of the Targum 
of Onkelos, the Septuagint Greek, and the Vul- 
gate. Cardinal Ximenes called to his aid a large 
number of scholars to undertake the work, which 
was done at Complutum in Spain. The New 
Testament was finished in 15 14, and published in 
1522. For this edition many manuscripts were 
put at the disposal of the scholars by the guard- 
ians of the papal library at Rome, but it has never 
been clearly understood what these documents 
were, though they seem to have been of compara- 
tively late dates. This edition received the name 
"The Complutensian Polyglott n from the place 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 1 53 

where it was made. Erasmus then undertook an 
edition in 1516, prepared with great haste chiefly 
from manuscripts preserved at Basle, dating from 
about the sixteenth century, with one or two 
others somewhat older, but not of first value. 

Numerous editions followed, varying much from 
each other in minor details, each serving, however, 
to increase interest in the subject and to emphasize 
the need of pursuing the study ; but all these edi- 
tions retained most of the characteristics of the 
edition of Erasmus, sometimes going back to the 
Complutensian authority. Then came two edi- 
tions brought out with great external elegance by 
two famous printers, a Paris folio in 1550, edited 
and printed by R. Estienne, and an edition by the 
Elzevirs, of Leyden, in 1624, which seemed to 
claim a certain superiority by their elegance which 
was not warranted by their text. However, the 
second edition of the Elzevir Bible, in 1633, 
announced boldly that its text was " the text now 
received by all," and the claim seems to have 
remained undisputed ; the words passed into 
general use as designating the "received text," 
and so the term textus receptus came into use, and 
is frequently before the eye of the reader to-day. 

But about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury a new desire arose to pursue the inquiry to 
more complete and satisfactory issues. A great 
manuscript had been brought to Europe by Cyril 



154 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Ivucar, the patriarch of Constantinople, in 1628, 
and given to the English monarch, as will be 
related more fully when we come to speak of the 
Alexandrine manuscript in the chapter upon the 
great uncials of the fifth century. English 
scholars became greatly interested, and Fell and 
Walton and Mill led the way, followed by Bentley 
and others. France and Germany advanced the 
work, Simon (1 689-1 695) contributing largely to 
the discontent with the received text, and Gries- 
bach, Scholz, and others appealing to larger sup- 
plies of materials, and employing better methods 
of study. But it was reserved for Lachmann, 
beginning in 1831, to apply the great principles of 
criticism which are generally followed at the 
present time, and which declare a complete 
emancipation from the received text in order to 
appeal to the most ancient and valuable manu- 
scripts, many of which had then come to light, 
while many others of the first value have since 
come into our possession. Henceforward a clearly 
scientific method was to be pursued, and other 
great scholars joined with Lachmann, and followed 
him in the pursuit of his great task. Tischendorf, 
in Germany, and Tregelles, in England, began 
their researches and publications, and their labors 
have been worthily succeeded by those of West- 
cott and Hort, resulting in a Greek text that is 
perhaps as near to the original autographs of the 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 1 55 

New Testament writers as can ever be pro- 
duced. 

The immense labor and the complete success 
of the textual critic may be imagined from the ac- 
counting of the various readings noted in existing 
documents, about two hundred thousand. But it 
must not be understood that this large number 
represents actually doubtful places in the New 
Testament, for nothing could be farther from the 
truth than such an impression. Each document 
is compared in turn with one standard, and the 
number of variations noted ; these various sums 
are then added together to make the actual num- 
ber of variations. An immense number of these 
may be counted perhaps upon a single word or 
passage, and so the real variation is repeated many 
times. In fact, the results of modern criticism 
have shown that among these many variations 
comparatively very few are of great importance. 
Dr. Ezra Abbot, in an essay upon "The New 
Testament Greek Text," ! in which he indicates 
very fully the character of the variations, setting 
their total number as then known at about one 
hundred and fifty thousand, says that we may 
dismiss nineteen-twentieths from consideration at 
once as being obviously of such a character, or sup- 
ported by so little authority, that no critic would 
regard them as having any claim to reception. 

1 " Critical Essays,' ' p. 208. 



156 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Nine teen-twentieths of the remainder are of 
no consequence as affecting- the sense, as they 
relate merely to matters of spelling, grammatical 
construction, the order of the words, or similar 
questions. Perhaps about four hundred cases re- 
main which involve a difference of meaning, often 
very slight, but sometimes having a relative im- 
portance of some magnitude. It may, however, 
be safely said that no Christian doctrine or duty 
rests on those portions of the text which are 
affected by differences in the manuscripts ; still 
less is anything essential to Christianity touched 
by the various readings. Perhaps the only excep- 
tion to this statement would be the bearing of a 
few passages upon the doctrine of the Trinity, but 
the truth or falsity of that doctrine by no means 
depends upon the reading of those passages alone. 
It has thus been determined definitely and upon 
adequate evidence, that the New Testament has 
been transmitted to us with no essential variation, 
and that we have it in its verity as it came from 
the writers of the first century. 

The reader cannot fail to find it of interest to 
know something beyond the mere names of the 
few great scholars of modern times who have 
contributed largely to this result. Their names 
will appear so frequently upon future pages, and 
their achievements will be so detailed, that brief 
sketches of their lives are here given. 




^ * 








_.J 



Group of Biblical Scholars. 

Lachmann. Tregelles. 

Tischendorf. 

Abbott. Scrivener. 

Pages 157-170. 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 15'/ 

Kare Lachmann leads the whole band of 
modern scholars, as we have said, for he was the 
first to proclaim freedom from slavery to the re- 
ceived text, and to declare the necessity of going 
back to the most ancient materials accessible. 
He was born at Brunswick in Germany, March 
4, 1793, and received his education at the uni- 
versities of Leipzig and Gottingen. Philological 
pursuits were his choice, and he soon won dis- 
tinction. He served in the army in the struggle 
against Napoleon from 1813 to 1815, after which 
he was appointed Professor Extraordinary at 
Konigsberg in 1818, and at Berlin in 1825. Here 
he did his great work and won the honors of his 
career. From the year 1816 to that of his death, 
185 1, his literary labors were without intermis- 
sion, and apart from his biblical studies he pub- 
lished many valuable editions of Greek, Latin, 
and German classics. But in the year 1831, his 
edition of the New Testament in Greek appeared 
and at once placed him among the first of biblical 
scholars. In this work he went back to the oldest 
Greek manuscripts then to be obtained, and made 
large use of the Greek Fathers, while he appealed 
to the earliest Latin whenever discordant readings 
in the Greek sources made it necessary to do so. 
Comparatively few Greek codices were then at 
his command, but the boldness of his plan, and 
the enunciation of an entirely new principle in 



158 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

criticism of the New Testament text, were of 
quite as much value as the first edition of his 
work itself. A second edition soon appeared in 
which he carried the principle yet farther. To 
discard all traditional authority inhering in the 
Textus Receptus, to pass by the work of former 
editors and appeal directly to the most ancient 
manuscripts themselves, to question the Fathers 
and from their quotations to discover the Bible of 
their day, to summon as witnesses the earliest 
versions, and comparing all to prepare a text 
quite independent of that which had been relied 
upon previously, was the new effort of Lachmann, 
in which he laid the broad foundations of the 
modern science of textual criticism. He knew 
that his work was far from complete, and that 
others would have richer materials and larger 
knowledge with which to pursue the research ; 
he regarded himself as a pioneer, laying open the 
path in which others should tread more safely and 
with swifter progress ; but that pioneer work was 
necessary, and L,achmann has been regarded al- 
ways as the leader of the great band of scholars 
who have given us our best knowledge of the 
New Testament. 

LOBEGOTT FRIEDRICH CONSTANTIN TlSCHEN- 
DORF, was born in Lengenfeld, Germany, January 
18, 18 1 5, the ninth child of his parents. The 
name L,obegott, or Praise God, was given to him 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 1 59 

by liis mother, who had had a presentiment that 
her child would be born blind, and when he was 
found to have good eyes, her thankful heart in- 
sisted that his name should testify to God's good- 
ness in this respect. The mother would have felt 
even more justified in thus naming her son if she 
could have foreseen that his remarkably keen sight 
and wonderful sagacity would enable him to de- 
cipher sacred documents that no other's eyes could 
read, and to become the first scholar of the world 
in the determination of the text of the Christian 
Scriptures. Tischendorf's early education was 
that usually given to a German boy, first in the 
common school at Lengenfeld, whence he went to 
the gymnasium at Plauen to prepare for the uni- 
versity, which he entered at Leipzig in 1834. It 
was here that he first gained public notice, his 
scholarship winning attention, and his inclination 
to biblical studies becoming evident. An essay 
on " The Doctrine of the Apostle Paul as to the 
Value of Christ's Death as a Satisfaction," won 
for him a prize medal, and when published in 
1837, brought to him the applause of the public. 
But he had not yet settled down to the work of 
his life, and several books of a lighter character 
appeared: a volume of poems, called " Mai- 
knospen," or "May-buds" and a novel, " Der 
junge Mystiker," "The Young Mystic," for which 
he used the pseudonym, Dr. Fritz. After gradu- 



l6o THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

ation he taught a little while, but soon returned 
to Leipzig with the avowed purpose of preparing 
an edition of the New Testament. 

Henceforth all his efforts were to be directed to 
the fulfillment of this one purpose with the pur- 
suit of the various researches which it made neces- 
sary. He secured the small grant of one hundred 
thalers a year for two years from the government 
of Saxony, effected a loan upon his life insurance 
policy as security, and set forth to visit the great 
libraries and study the documents. He was now 
twenty-five years old. ' ' God helps those who 
help themselves," he wrote, 1 "and full of faith 
that what is right must prosper, I resolved to set 
out for Paris, though I had not sufficient means to 
pay even for my traveling suit." In Paris he 
supported himself by his pen, meanwhile working 
assiduously in the library. The first edition of 
his New Testament appeared in 1841, was received 
with applause by the scholars, but it took eight 
years to sell an edition of fifteen hundred copies. 
In Paris his most noteworthy work was upon the 
Kphraem palimpsest, as described more fully on 
a later page. Many travels followed, with many 
labors in deciphering manuscripts, the publication 
of results, and the constant corrections of his New 
Testament. Among these toils the great achieve- 
ment of his genius and patience was the discovery 

1 " Narrative of the Discovery of the Sinaitic Manuscript." 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS l6l 

of the Codex Sinaiticus in the Convent of St. 
Catherine, and his publication of it in lithographic 
fac simile. His New Testament meanwhile 
advanced from edition to edition until the eighth 
critica major was nearly completed at the time of 
his death, and no less than twenty-two editions of 
the New Testament in all had appeared from his 
hand. 

This laborious life won high honors which 
were not, however, the highest joys that rewarded 
him. These he found in the pursuit of his 
studies itself, the satisfaction of the processes and 
of accomplishment, and in the fellowship of cul- 
tured minds. Honorary degrees were conferred 
upon him by many universities, and he was 
elected to membership in learned societies, and 
orders of knighthood were given him. After his 
discovery of the Sinaitic Codex he was made an 
hereditary noble of the Russian empire, and his 
own countrymen henceforth greeted him as Con- 
stantin von Tischendorf. His titles were but the 
deserved recognition of his real nobility. 

In his will, written in 1863, Tischendorf wrote 
as follows : " God has bestowed on me a happy 
life, richly adorned by his blessing. Trouble and 
toil it has been, but it was to me in truth precious. 
May God put his blessing also on that which I 
leave to posterity ; it is his own work. My hand 
has served only him, according to my best knowl- 



162 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

edge and conviction, even though, in all weak- 
ness. In science I pursued no other aim than the 
truth ; to it I have unconditionally bowed the 
knee ; I never subordinated my conviction to 
applause on the right hand or the left ... I have 
purposed and sought only that which serves truth 
and the kingdom of the Lord." 

It w T as in the midst of his labors that he was 
stricken down by apoplexy on the fifth of May, 
1873. For more than a year he lingered, until 
the seventh of December, 1874, when he who was 
at once a great scholar and a simple-hearted 
Christian, went away to receive his honors from 
his Lord. 

Dr. Caspar Rene Gregory, a distinguished 
American scholar, resident in Leipzig and 
honored as the successor to Tischendorf s labors 
in the completion of his last edition of the New 
Testament, and the preparation of its Prolego- 
mena, writes thus concerning the character and 
achievements of the great German 1 : ' i If greatness 

1 Dr. Gregory's great work is completed, the Prolegomena to Tisch- 
endorf s Greek Testament, Vol. III., of the editio octava critica 
major, Leipzig, J. C. Hinrichs. " Almost thirty full years from the 
day when the first fascicle of this edition went forth, almost eighteen 
from that when I undertook the work of writing these Prolegomena, 
after the first part published in the year 1884, the second in the year 
1890,1 offer the final part to the kind reader." Thus begins the 
Latin preface by Dr. Gregory, and thus patient and thorough is his 
scholarship. The volume is published just as this book goes to press. 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 163 

consists in the unwearying pursuit of one idea, 
Tischendorf was great. If greatness consists in 
persistent and successful application f .o the study 
of difficult things, Tischendorf was great. If 
greatness consists in surmounting hindrances 
and prejudices, scholastic, religious, and national, 
Tischendorf was great. If greatness consists in 
the acquaintance with the use of, and the turning 
to general advantage of, the chief literary treas- 
ures of Europe and of the nearest East, Tischen- 
dorf was great. If greatness consists in earning 
the gratitude of the scholars of all lands, Tischen- 
dorf was great. And if greatness consists in a 
participation alike in the favor of prince and 
scholar, of State and of Church, Tischendorf was 
great." 1 Dr. Gregory gives a list of the writings 
of Professor Tischendorf, which fills eleven closely 
printed pages. 

Samuel Prideaux Tregeixes, the famous 
English critic, was born two years earlier and 
died four months later than Tischendorf, and thus 
his labors were almost exactly coincident in time 
with those of the German scholar. He was born 
at Falmouth, England, January 30, 1813. His 
parents were Quakers, and their son was reared 
in the quiet life of that community. In later 
years he shared the views of the Plymouth Breth- 
ren, and afterward worshiped with the Presbyte- 

1 " Bibliotbeca Sacra," Vol. XXXIII., 153. 



164 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

rians. His early education was meagre, being that 
which was offered by the Falmouth Classical School. 
After this period of school life was closed he 
labored for six years in the iron works at Neath 
Abbey, Glamorganshire, which must have been 
a severe test to a spirit in which the genius of a 
scholar was already making itself felt. He soon 
found more congenial occupation as a private 
tutor, and at an early age began to devote himself 
with special zeal to the study of the Bible in the 
original languages and some of the older versions, 
particularly the Syriac. His interest and profi- 
ciency in the study of Hebrew was shown by a 
translation of Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon pub- 
lished in 1847, an d many works of a similar char- 
acter. As early as 1838, at the age of twenty-five, 
he had formed the plan of a critical edition of the 
New Testament to be founded solely on ancient 
authorities, and though he published the book of 
the Revelation in Greek in 1844, the prospectus 
of the whole work was not issued until 1848. 
The work was to appear in parts, the first of which 
containing Matthew and Mark was issued in 1857, 
and the closing part in 1872. About midway in 
this great work, Tregelles suffered a stroke of par- 
alysis, which rendered its completion a matter of 
great difficulty and heroic application. He had 
never had robust health, and through all his life 
was poor. In 1862, a grant of one hundred 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 1 65 

pounds a year was made to him from the govern- 
ment, and this was doubled in 1870 ; but even 
this aid did not place him beyond the reach of 
want, particularly with respect to the means 
necessary for the pursuit of his costly studies, 
which compelled him to take long journeys and 
live for considerable periods away from home. 
His labors were excessive and often without due 
recognition ; his eyesight, always poor, grew very 
dim in his later years, and wholly failed him a 
considerable time before his death, which occurred 
at Plymouth, April 24, 1875. It is pathetic to 
note the struggle of his later years, when the one 
absorbing purpose was to finish his New Testa- 
ment and place in the hands of subscribers the 
completed work, a struggle with disease and 
blindness, but successful, and worthy to win for 
him a place among the heroes as well as among 
scholars. Says Dr. Abbot of this work in 1875, 
before the edition of Westcott and Hort ap- 
peared : "It will not meet all the demand of the 
critical student. It ignores a considerable portion, 
though not often a decisive portion, of the evi- 
dence for the various readings ; but it is by far the 
most important original contribution which Eng- 
land has made in the present century to the estab- 
lishment of a pure text of the Greek Testament. It 
is a monument of the most conscientious, disinter- 
ested, and arduous labor, prosecuted with indomit- 



1 66 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

able perseverance and zeal, under discouraging 
circumstances, for a high end. The author has 
earned a title to the warmest gratitude of all who 
are interested in the study of the New Testament. 
. . . Rare, indeed, are the examples of such 
patient, unwearied, self-sacrificing devotion to a 
noble object as his life presents ; and ever honored 
be his memory ! " 

Ezra Abbot, whose words have just been 
quoted, must be named as the foremost American 
scholar in this department of learning. His life 
and successful labors are one more example, not 
unlike that of Tregelles, of the rise of a lofty soul 
from circumstances not favorable to ambition. 
He was born in Jackson, Waldo County, Me., 
April 28, 1819. His educational advantages were 
much greater than those of Tregelles. He was 
fitted for college at Phillips (Exeter) Academy, 
graduated at Bowdoin College in 1840, receiving 
its degree of A. M. in 1843 > ne removed to Cam- 
bridge in 1847, anc * after some time spent in teach- 
ing and in working in the libraries of Harvard 
College and the Boston Athenaeum, he became 
assistant librarian of Harvard College in 1856, a 
position which he retained until his appointment 
as the Bussey professor of New Testament Criti- 
cism and Interpretation in the Harvard Divinity 
School in 1872. His conspicuous ability and 
large attainments as a biblical scholar had been 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 167 

recognized many years previous to his election to 
this professorship. In 1852, he was made a mem- 
ber of the American Oriental Society, and from 
1853 was its recording secretary ; in 1861, a mem- 
ber of the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences ; in 1871, he was appointed University 
Lecturer on the Textual Criticism of the New 
Testament ; and in the same year he was chosen 
as one of the American Company for the revision 
of the English Bible. Honorary degrees were 
conferred upon him by Harvard, Yale, and Bow- 
doin Colleges ; and the degree of Doctor of Divin- 
ity was tendered by the University of Edinburgh 
at its tercentenary, but he died before the celebra- 
tion occurred. Prof. J. H. Thayer, d. d., write; 
of " the variety and extent of his learning, the re- 
tentiveness and accuracy of his memory, and the 
penetration and fairness of his judgment, which 
won for him the highest place in the esteem of the 
learned world. His rare gifts and attainments, 
however, were no more conspicuous than the 
moral qualities that endeared him to all who 
knew him. He was generous to a fault, giving 
time and strength and learning to those whose 
own acquisitions were inferior to his own." Presi- 
dent Woolsey said : " He surpassed all men whom 
I ever knew in his readiness to serve others who 
had but few books on hand, and did not know 
where to look for information." Another said : 



1 68 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

u He has spent his life in reading other people's 
proof-sheets." In all his work he was wholly un- 
partisan. No more honest scholar ever lived, and 
he gave all his energies to a conscientious deter- 
mination of the truth. This great moral force of 
his character rendered his scholarship especially 
valuable in his chosen work of biblical criticism. 
His judgments were formed only after a perfectly 
candid examination of all the facts, and the re- 
sults obtained carried the more conviction to the 
minds of others. His great essay upon " The Au- 
thorship of the Fourth Gospel " is " the best illus- 
tration of biblical criticism which American sacred 
literature affords." 

Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener was 
born very near the date of the birth of Tischen- 
dorf and Tregelles, September 29, 18 13, at Ber- 
mondsey, England. He graduated at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, in 1835. For a few years he 
was a teacher, but in 1839, ne took charge of the 
parish of Sandford Orcas in Somerset, and after- 
ward taught the Falmouth School at the same time 
that he served one of the churches of Falmouth, 
thus beginning the great labors that ceased only 
with his death. In 1861, he became rector of St. 
Gerrans in Cornwall, whence he removed to Ex- 
eter, and thence to Iyondon, taking charge of the 
large parish of Hendon in 1876. As early as 
1845 ne began the collection of manuscripts of the 



THE SCIENCE AND THE CRITICS 169 

New Testament. His " Novum Test amentum 
Grcecum" published in i860, and in a second 
edition in 1867, compared the work of several 
critics and found wide favor. But his great work is 
the u Plain Introduction," just issued in its fourth 
edition as this page is written, under the care of 
the Rev. Edward Miller, M. A., of Oxford, and 
after the death of Dr. Scrivener. In London he 
had the care of a parish of more than five thou- 
sand inhabitants, whose numbers and needs were 
constantly increasing, and his literary labors were 
thus pursued amid great difficulties. After pre- 
paring about one hundred and twenty-five pages 
of the third edition of the "Introduction," he 
was stricken by paralysis and his future work 
suffered still further hindrance, but it seems that 
the spirit of a scholar is indomitable, and he per- 
severed with his toil until his death. He occu- 
pied a conservative position as a critic, always 
favoring the received text, and often carrying 
this preference to an extreme. He was also a 
champion of the cursives, and generally gave them 
a higher place as authorities than was granted 
them by other scholars. 

Many names of prominent living critics, as well 
as those of others who have passed into the Silence, 
might be dwelt upon in these pages, and from 
them all could be learned the lessons of devotion 
which are of importance in these hurried and often 



I70 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

selfish days. America is not without illustrious 
men whose labors have placed them in the front 
rank of biblical scholarship, and whose critical 
knowledge of the sacred texts is of high authority. 
To all such consecrated lives the Christian church 
owes a debt of gratitude that it can best repay by 
its reverence for the written word, and its loyalty 
to the Word in flesh, of whom it testifies. 



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Codex Vaticanus, B. 

(Matt 2^11-Mark 1 : 9.) 

Page 171. 



XI 

THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 
(Fourth Century) 

r PHB two most remarkable and valuable Greek 
1 manuscripts are the Codex Vaticanus, B, and 
the Codex Sinaiticus, both dating from about 
the middle of the fourth century, or possibly even 
earlier. 

The Vatican Codex is so called from the Vatican 
Library in Rome, of which it is the chief treasure. 
This library was founded by Pope Nicholas V., in 
the year 1448, and it contains one of the most re- 
markable collection of books in the world, num- 
bering over one hundred thousand, of which more 
than one-quarter are manuscripts. The first cata- 
logue of this collection was published in 1475 and 
the Codex B appears in the catalogue of that date. 
The manuscript, therefore, may be considered to 
have been one of the original volumes of the col- 
lection. It seems to be of Alexandrine origin, but 
this cannot be determined with certainty. It has 
been said to have belonged to a learned Greek ec- 
clesiastic, named Bessarion, who became estranged 
from the Greek church through the debates of the 

171 



172 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Councils of Ferrara and Florence, sought residence 
in Italy, and was raised to the cardinalate by Pope 
Bugenius IV., who was the immediate predecessor 
of the founder of the Vatican Library. His house 
in Rome was the repository of a great collection 
of manuscripts, and the resort of a learned circle. 
At his death he bequeathed his books to the city of 
Venice, thus beginning the library of St. Mark in 
that city ; but it is hardly probable that the manu- 
script went to Venice and afterward returned to 
Rome, and we cannot be sure whence it came into 
possession of the Vatican. Tischendorf believed it 
to be of about the same date as the Sinaitic man- 
uscript ; but others have thought it older, and 
Tregelles placed its possible existence as early as 
the Council of Nicsea, in 325, and certainly before 
340. Scrivener speaks of it as "probably the 
oldest vellum manuscript in existence," and 
Westcott and Hort give it the first place in im- 
portance. 

The Vatican manuscript, No. 1209 of the class 
catalogue of the library, contains the Septuagint 
version of the Old Testament, of which, however, 
considerable portions have been lost : all the book 
of Genesis to chapter 46 : 28, and Psalms 105 to 
137 inclusive ; and the New Testament with the 
exception of the epistles to Philemon and Titus, 
the two to Timothy, that to the Hebrews after the 
fourteenth verse of chapter nine, and the whole 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 1 73 

of the Revelation. These lost books have been 
said to be in the codex in a later hand, but in 
fact the Revelation alone is supplied thus, being 
the product of the fifteenth century. 

The whole of the text of this ancient manu- 
script is in the uncial characters, in three narrow 
columns to a page, and the letters are clear, sim- 
ple, and beautiful. There are seven hundred and 
fifty-nine very thin and delicate leaves of vellum, 
of which one hundred and forty-six belong to the 
New Testament, and all are bound in one volume 
of red morocco about ten and one-half inches in 
length, ten inches in breadth, and from four to 
five inches in thickness. There are no divisions 
between the words, but a change from one subject 
to another is sometimes marked by a space of a 
letter, or of only half a letter. Originally the ini- 
tial letters were of the same size as all the others, 
but a later hand has written larger initials by the 
side of the simpler characters. Punctuation rarely 
appears, except as interpolated by later scribes, and 
even thus it is rare, occurring only four times in 
the first six chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. 
At present the text is provided with accents and 
other marks which were once considered the work 
of the original writer. A dispute upon this mat- 
ter once raged, but it was at last determined by 
the aid of very powerful glasses that the accents 
and breathings were in a different ink from the 



174 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

main body of the text. Titles to the various 
books are written above them, and subscriptions 
also appear. Sometimes later copyists have added 
a few words, as to the Epistle to the Romans the 
words, // was written from Corinth are added to 
the genuine subscription to the Romans. The ink 
is now faded, and at some early date the letters 
were retouched by a careful hand throughout the 
whole of the manuscript, which gives it a peculiar 
appearance and renders the difficulty of its critical 
examination much greater. 

This ancient codex has always been considered 
of the higest value in the determination of the 
true readings of Scripture, and yet it has been 
with the greatest difficulty until recently that 
scholars have gained access to it. The present 
pontiff, Pope I^eo XIII. , has pursued a far more 
liberal policy than that of his predecessors, and a 
splendid fac simile edition by phototype has been 
published and it may be seen in many of the well- 
equipped libraries of Europe and America. But 
for a long time the manuscript remained hidden 
away in its case, and was used only by scholars of 
the Roman church. Its first collation was made by 
Bartolocci in 1669 ; another followed in 1725 by 
an Italian named Mico, who prepared it for the 
aid of the English scholar, Beutley, who was 
projecting an edition of the New Testament in 
Greek. Other attempts, all unsatisfactory, were 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 1 75 

made, notably by Cardinal Mai in 1838, whose 
work was published in 1857, three years after his 
death. Vercellone, a monk of St. Barnabas, com- 
pleted a better edition in 1859. 

But Protestant scholars had not been content 
with these efforts made under the grudging pat- 
ronage of the Roman church, and several times 
attempted to study the precious volume. The 
extreme jealousy with which it was guarded is 
well illustrated by their attempts to gain the privi- 
lege of using the codex. Dr. Tregelles, in 1845, 
went to Rome with this sole design. ^Vrmed with 
a letter from Cardinal Wiseman he succeeded at 
last in receiving the coveted permission ; but two 
prelates were assigned to the duty of watching 
him and they would not even permit him to open 
the volume without searching his pockets and 
taking away all implements by which he could 
copy the text. They interfered with any pro- 
longed study, and often took the book hurriedly 
away from him. But by a little craft and patience 
he succeeded in making a few notes on his cuffs 
and finger nails ! Dean Alford made a similar 
attempt in 1861, and Cardinal Antonelli gave him 
a special permit to use the manuscript ior the pur- 
pose of verifying passages ; but the librarian in- 
terpreted this as a permission merely to look at 
the book. Tischendorf, in 1843, two y ears previ- 
ous to the attempt of Tregelles, spent some months 



176 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

in the great libraries of many European cities, 
and after he had become well-known as a critic, 
applied at the Vatican for permission to study its 
treasures. Tischendorf describes his difficulties 
in the most interesting way in an article in the 
Leipziger Zeitung 1 of May 31, 1866 : " I had been 
commended in the most earnest manner by Guizot 
to the French ambassador, Count La tour Mau- 
bourg ; I was also favored with many letters of 
introduction from Prince John of Saxony to his 
personal friends of high rank ; and in addition 
with a very flattering note from the Archbishop 
Afire, of Paris, directed to Gregory XVI. The 
latter, after a prolonged audience granted to me, 
took an ardent interest in my undertaking ; Car- 
dinal Mai received me with kind recognition ; 
Cardinal Mezzofanti honored me with some Greek 
verses composed in my praise ; but notwithstand- 
ing I had to content myself with six hours for a 
hasty examination of the Codex Vaticanus and 
the transcription in fac simile of a few lines." 
Twenty - three years later, Tischendorf made 
another attempt. In the meantime he had dis- 
covered and published the Codex Sinaiticus, and 
the wide fame of that achievement undoubtedly 
aided him now, when he once more requested 
access to the only manuscript of equal value in the 
world. He presented himself in February, 1866, 

1 " Wissenschaftliche Beilage" pp. 189-192. 



before the papal authorities, and after much trou- 
ble gained the desired permission, and even special 
concessions were given by which he could have 
the use of a private room, with the extension of 
his time beyond the usual working hours of the 
library. Even some of the many Roman feast- 
days when the library would be closed were to be 
disregarded for Tischendorfs benefit. But many 
of these privileges were speedily restricted, if not 
withdrawn altogether, and he came near losing all 
by his unwary zeal which led him to copy very 
copiously, until a suspicion was aroused that he 
was gathering materials enough to compromise 
seriously the papal edition of Cozza and Vercellone, 
then in preparation and soon to be published. In 
fact, the manuscript was taken from him ; but he 
pleaded so well and made such liberal promises 
of aid to those editors in producing their work, 
that he was permitted to resume his task. By in- 
credible diligence and dexterity, for the volume 
was subject to his inspection only forty-two hours 
altogether, he succeeded in collating the whole 
text and in making a transcript of twenty pages. 
But all these great labors, and all publications of 
this manuscript have now been largely superseded 
by the magnificent edition in five volumes, already 
referred to, reproducing \nfac simile every page of 
the codex. It is a splendid work, and was a 
worthy gift of the pope to the late World's Fair in 



178 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Chicago, where the volumes were exhibited in the 
convent of Santa Maria de la Rabida. The text 
is thus given to the world in all its completeness ; 
but the work upon the text done by the great 
critics before this publication loses none of its 
value thereby, but is only made more accessible 
and more intelligible on that account. 

The difficulty attending the study of this man- 
uscript in the past renders one item of its history 
of peculiar interest. In the year 1808, the papal 
dominions were made an appendage of the French 
empire. The conqueror, Napoleon I., caused 
many of the treasures of the Roman museums and 
libraries to be carried to Paris, and among them 
was this precious codex. Deposited in the French 
capital it might have been studied freely, had any 
scholar of the requisite skill been disposed to apply 
himself to the task. Such critics were not ready, 
however, and when Napoleon was overthrown at 
Waterloo in 18 15, the manuscript with many 
other treasures in Paris was returned to Rome. 
If only Tregelles or Tischendorf could have seen 
the famous volume in red morocco before it went 
back to its seclusion, what years of the history of 
textual criticism might have been anticipated ! 
But in 1815, when the volume was sent back to 
Rome, Tregelles was only three years old, and 
Tischendorf, a baby of two years, was still the 
petted child of a humble home in Lengenfeld. 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 1 79 

God has his own times in which his great pur- 
poses shall be accomplished. 

This is seen even more strangely in the in- 
tensely interesting story, now oft told, of the dis- 
covery of the other great authority of the fourth 
century, the Sinaitic Manuscript, X. 

Among all the wonderful achievements of Tesch- 
endorf, the finding and the publication of this doc- 
ument will ever hold the prominent place. Dur- 
ing all the years in which he gave himself to the 
critical study of the New Testament text, he was 
haunted by the thought that many libraries in the 
convents of the East must contain works of the 
greatest value in his department of labor, and he 
formed the project of journeying thither to explore 
the recesses of Greek, Coptic, Syrian, and Arme- 
nian monasteries. It was not until the year 1843 
that he could put his plan into execution, and 
then only with difficulty, on account of the 
poverty which harassed all of his earlier labors. 
But at length he was able to start, making it his 
first employment to examine many of the Euro- 
pean libraries, and it was at this time that he 
sought access to the Vatican manuscript as related. 
Sailing at last from Leghorn, in March, 1844, he 
arrived on the 4th of April at Alexandria, whence 
he proceeded to Cairo. Though he visited many 
conventual establishments in the vicinity, he 
found nothing of value, and he set out from Cairo 



l8o THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

on May 12th for Suez and the Sinaitic Penin- 
sula. 

Near the base of Mt. Sinai stands the convent 
of St. Catherine, dating from the time of the By- 
zantine emperor, Justinian (a. d. 527-565), who 
protected the little church erected here by Helena, 
the mother of Constantine, by a fortification, and 
so endowed it that from this early time it has 
been an object of great interest, and has afforded 
hospitality to many travelers. According to the 
legend, St. Catherine, a virgin of noble birth and 
great attainments as a scholar, suffered martyrdom 
in Alexandria, November 25, 313, under the per- 
secution of Maximin. Five hundred years later 
her body was discovered, and angels transported 
it through the air from the scene of her cruel 
death to the top of a lofty peak near Sinai, where 
the pious monks of the convent received it and 
carried it down to its final resting-place within the 
walls. Up to this time the convent had been 
dedicated to the Transfiguration, but its name was 
now changed to St. Catherine. 

Here through many centuries the brotherhood 
has devoted itself to worship and quiet study, and 
a rich library has grown up in the course of time. 
Once the convent was the resort of many pil- 
grims, drawn thither on account of the sanctity 
of the spot, and chapels were erected within the 
walls for the various sects ; and it may be that 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS l8l 

some of the literary treasures were brought by 
these pilgrims as an offering to the brotherhood. 
It is noteworthy, however, that the monks have 
never made any considerable contribution to the 
cause of learning, and the strange ignorance and 
neglect found there by modern travelers has been 
the subject of much comment. 

Teschendorf arrived at St. Catherine's on the 
24th of May. l He describes his first view of the 
convent as very inviting, with its buttressed walls, 
and its fine gardens of cypress, pomegranate, and 
orange trees. The walls were without entrance 
except through a door elevated about forty feet 
from the ground. Arriving beneath this aperture, 
the Bedouins of his party gave utterance to shrill 
cries, and discharged a volley of musketry to 
announce the arrival to the inmates, who soon 
appeared above, and sought the name and creden- 
tials of the traveler. After considerable parley- 
ing these were found satisfactory, a rope was 
lowered, and Teschendorf was drawn up into the 
convent. 

He was allowed free access to the library, which 
was rich in manuscripts. For some time, how- 
ever, it seemed that his researches would be unre- 
warded by any discovery of value. At last his 
eye fell upon a large basket full of old parchments, 
standing on the floor, waiting to serve as kindlings 

lu Reise in den Orient" (Leipzig, 1846) I, 216 seq. 
Q 



1 82 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

when the next fire should require their use. Two 
basketfuls of similar fragments had already been 
employed for this purpose. But these mouldering 
leaves were destined to start a blaze of wonder 
and delight which should yet throw its glow over 
all the civilized world, for as Tischendorf turned 
over the pieces he found that there were a number 
of leaves of the Old Testament in Greek, which 
bore evidence of being more ancient than any he 
had ever seen. His quick exclamation and his 
trembling hands revealed somewhat of his feelings 
and threw suspicion into the minds of his watch- 
ful companions ; but they allowed him to appropri- 
ate a small portion of the fragments, consisting 
of forty-three leaves, though no persuasions could 
induce the monks to part with the remainder, 
which only a few moments before they had been 
so ready to burn. The scholar carried the rescued 
portions away to his cell, and found them to con- 
tain parts of i Chronicles, all of Nehemiah and 
Esther, parts of Jeremiah and Lamentations, and 
parts of the apocryphal books of Tobit and 2 
Bsdras. He afterward added a copy of a single 
page containing text from Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
which he was enabled to make. All his efforts, 
however, to gain possession of the remainder of 
the manuscript met with failure. His satisfaction 
had been too plainly expressed, and the brother- 
hood had become convinced that they had in their 




O n 

Q eg 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 1 83 

hands a treasure which ought not to be lightly 
surrendered. Tischendorf was obliged to take his 
departure, content yet not content, with the forty- 
three leaves. 

This fragment, a small part only of the great 
manuscript which was destined to lie hidden yet 
many years, was borne to Leipzig, where it was 
deposited in the University Library, and was 
named by its discoverer the Codex Friderico- 
Augustanus, in acknowledgment of the patronage 
of the king of Saxony, under which the Eastern 
journeys were conducted. 

Many years passed away, in which the labors 
of Tischendorf were unremitted, and many publi- 
cations of lasting value to students of the Bible 
were issued. But through all the pressure of 
these duties, he never forgot the treasure that had 
been left at Sinai, nor gave up the hope of one 
day getting possession of it. He made attempts 
to secure the manuscript through the intercession 
of a friend in Egypt, who was physician to the 
Viceroy, but the only response was : "The monks 
of the convent have learned the value of these 
sheets of parchment since your departure, and will 
not part with them at any price. ' ' But hope 
refused to die in the breast of the ardent scholar, 
and he determined to return to the East for the 
purpose of copying the document, if he could not 
secure the original. Accordingly, in February, 



184 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

1853, h e stood once more beneath the walls of the 
convent and was welcomed by the brotherhood. 
But the welcome did not mean success ; not the 
slightest trace of the coveted parchment could be 
found, and he was obliged to return to Europe. 

Tischendorf could not rest. Engaged in pre- 
paring a multitude of publications, he was 
haunted by the thought that somewhere, however 
jealously guarded, was what he believed to be the 
most precious manuscript in the world. It might 
not be at St. Catherine's any longer. Perhaps the 
archbishop had demanded its removal to some 
securer depository. Perhaps it had been wholly 
lost through the carelessness of the ignorant 
monks. But so long as effort could be made to 
secure it, so long did the plan remain in the mind 
of Tischendorf to search further for it until he 
should learn with certainty that it could not be 
obtained. 

The convent at Sinai, like many other establish- 
ments of the kind in the East, was under the 
ecclesiastical system of the Greek Church, of 
which the Emperor of Russia is the nominal head. 
It was believed that if a journey were undertaken 
under the patronage of the Czar himself, that the 
authority of his commission would outweigh all 
other considerations with the custodians of libra- 
ries, and wherever the precious document might 
be hidden away it would be produced at the 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 185 

imperial command. In the autumn of 1856 the 
scheme was broached at the Russian court, but 
many vexatious hindrances offered, and it was not 
till January, 1859, that Tischendorf was enabled 
to start once more for the convent at Sinai, this 
time armed with documents which must avail, if 
any could, in opening to him the most secret 
alcoves of the buildings. It should be remarked 
that, during the whole interval since his first jour- 
ney and notwithstanding the interest excited by 
the Codex Friderico-Augustanus, he had kept the 
secret of the place in which he had found it, hav- 
ing imparted it only to the two or three friends 
who aided him in his search. On the 31st of 
January, 1859, he entered the convent for the 
third time. The familiar rooms of the library 
were thrown open to him, and Cyril of Athos, the 
custodian of the books, showed him every cour- 
tesy. Many valuable manuscripts, some of which 
he had not seen in his previous visits, were put 
into his hands ; but nowhere was the one treasure 
he desired, and every inquiry was met with sin- 
cere denials of its existence in the monastery. 
Tischendorf was forced to the conclusion that it 
had either been destroyed, or removed to some 
other library, and on the 4th of February he gave 
orders to his Bedouins to have the camels ready 
on the 7th to start for Cairo. On the afternoon of 
the same day he took a long walk with the stew- 



1 86 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

ard of the convent, returning about sunset, and 
accepting an invitation to sup with, the steward in 
his own apartment. They had been talking of 
their studies, and as they entered the steward 
said, "I too have been reading the Septuagint 
lately," and he went to a corner of the cell and 
brought a bulky volume, wrapped in a red cloth, 
and laid it in TischendorP s hands. The scholar 
opened the book and saw at a glance that the 
wish of years was attained. But how much more 
than he had dared hope ! For here were indeed the 
fragments that he had left in the waste-basket 
fifteen years before, and also other parts of the 
Old Testament ; but, better than all, the whole of 
the New Testament, to which was added a copy 
of the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Shep- 
herd of Hermas, books not of canonical authority, 
but of great value among the earliest works of 
Christian authorship. 

With that night the German scholar began a 
task that was continued with never flagging zeal 
during the next fourteen years. He concealed 
his feelings as well as he could, profiting by his 
former experience, and asked carelessly if he 
might take the volume to his room to examine it 
a little more leisurely. Permission was readily 
granted, and after the supper he hastened to 
depart. Once in his cell alone, he gave way to 
unchecked expressions of his joy. " I knew," he 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 187 

says, " that I held in my hands the most precious 
biblical treasure in existence — a document whose 
age and importance exceeded that of any of the 
manuscripts I had ever examined during twenty 
years' study of the subject. I cannot now, I con- 
fess, recall all the emotions which I felt in that 
exciting moment, with such a diamond in my 
possession." There was no sleep for him that 
night. By the dim light of a candle he set to 
work to copy the Epistle of Barnabas, the original 
Greek of which had never been discovered before, 
and which was known only through a L,atin trans- 
lation. Early the next morning he applied to the 
steward for permission to take the manuscript to 
Cairo to have it copied in full ; but the steward 
had no authority to grant such a favor, and the 
prior had just departed for Cairo upon his way to 
Constantinople to share in the election of a new 
archbishop. Tischendorf at once started to over- 
take him. The Russian flag was hoisted and a 
salute fired as the scholar rode away. He found 
the prior at Cairo, and his consent was readily 
gained, and at the end of nine days the book, 
brought by a special messenger with a swift 
dromedary, was once more in Tischendorf's pos- 
session. 

With the aid of two German friends, and with 
almost incredible toil, the whole manuscript was 
copied within the space of two months. But 



1 88 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Teschendorf now treasured the hope that the origi- 
nal itself might be transferred to Europe. A 
young Englishman, who learned of the precious 
document, offered to buy it ; but the prior of the 
monastery said that the brotherhood preferred to 
give it to the Russian emperor. This was just 
what Tischendorf desired, but the consent of the 
new archbishop must be obtained before the trans- 
fer could be effected, and the archbishop was not 
yet elected. Unfortunately, there were many 
difficulties connected with the election, and a long 
delay ensued ; but Tischendorf was enabled to 
assist in the settlement of the dispute, and at last 
he sailed for Europe with the Sinaitic manuscript 
and many other treasures in his possession. 

Now followed the labor of preparing an edition 
of the codex in fac simile. The work was pub- 
lished in 1862 in four volumes, and copies were 
sent by imperial gift to the great institutions of 
learning and libraries throughout the world. 
Subsequently copies were sold, and several of 
them are to be seen in America. 

Without pausing to notice the honors that 
poured in upon the great scholar, whose sagacity 
and perseverance had accomplished so great a 
work, we must pass to a brief description of the 
manuscript itself. 

The Sinaitic Codex has three hundred and 
forty-six and a half leaves, thirteen and a half 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 1 89 

inches wide by nearly fifteen inches long. One 
hundred and ninety-nine of these leaves contain 
parts of the Old Testament, with the poetical por- 
tions written (stichometrically) in two columns 
upon a page, but the other pages with four col- 
umns. The New Testament is complete, and 
with the Bpistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd 
of Hennas occupies the remainder of the volume. 
The parchment is of a very fine quality — Tisch- 
endorf says it is made from the skins of young 
antelopes — and the text is written in beautiful 
uncial letters, without accents or breathings, with 
no spaces between the words and no large initials. 
The margins have the Ammonian sections and 
Eusebian canons. Tischendorf declared that he 
could detect the corrections of at least ten differ- 
ent revisers, extending over a period ending in 
the twelfth century. 

It should be said in conclusion that modern 
travelers are often misled by the discontent which 
they find at the convent of St. Catherine, the 
monks complaining that their most precious liter- 
ary treasure was taken from them by some trick- 
ery, and assertions in books of travel are not infre- 
quent to the effect that the great Tischendorf did 
not deal quite fairly with the monks, who had re- 
ceived him to their hospitality. Dr. Philip Schaff, 
in his introduction to the first volume of Westcott 
and Hort's New Testament in Greek, says that 



190 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

in 1877 he was at the convent, and mentioned 
the name of Teschendorf, when ' ' the snb -prior 
kindled up in indignation," and said that "he 
had stolen their greatest treasure on the pretext of 
a temporary loan"; and when reminded of the 
splendid new silver shrine given to the monastery 
by the Bmperor of Russia in exchange for the 
manuscript, only answered that " they did not 
want the silver, but the manuscript " — the manu- 
script which these monks could not read, and 
were at one time ready to throw into the fire. 
The facts of the case seem to be that at first the 
document was taken "as a loan," Tischendorf 
himself having recorded that fact. But later 
negotiations ensued, which resulted in a change 
of the loan to a gift, and the transfer of the book 
was perfectly fair and conclusive. It may be that 
the rank and file of the brotherhood of St. Cather- 
ine never knew all the steps, perhaps not the con- 
cluding steps, of the transaction ; the real author- 
ity to transfer the manuscript rested in other 
hands than theirs, and the document consigning 
it to the Bmperor of Russia was duly signed by 
Archbishop Callistratos, as well as by the fathers 
of the monasteries of St. Catherine and Cairo. 
In addition, the archbishop wrote letters to Tisch- 
endorf, thanking him in the name of the brother- 
hood for his kind endeavors in their behalf. 
Whatever misunderstanding may still prevail at 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 191 

the convent, it is clear that the principals engaged 
in the transaction are free from reproach. 1 Tesch- 
endorf was aware of the aspersions upon his 
integrity, and indignantly answered them in his 
work, " Die Sinaibibel, Ihre Entdeckimg, Heraus- 
gabe, und Erwerbung" pp. 91, 92. 

So did this priceless volume come forth from 
the obscurity of ages, henceforth to be regarded 
by Christian scholars as sharing with the Codex 
Vaticanus the first place in the ranks of all the 
witnesses to the original text of the Scriptures. 
Its value as compared with that of the Vatican 
manuscript is variously estimated, and perhaps it 
is impossible to tell which is the more important. 
In one respect at least the Codex found at Mount 
Sinai stands in the lead : it contains the New 
Testament complete, while the Vatican Codex 

1 Mrs. Lewis in her journal published in the volume " How the 
Codex was Found," that is, the new codex of the Gospels in Syriac, 
repeats that Tischendorf got the Sinaitic manuscript " not without 
guile," and that his success has left to this day unpleasant remem- 
brances and suspicions in the minds of the brotherhood ; and even 
Prof. J. Rendel Harris in his " Biblical Fragments from Mt. Sinai," 
p. 4, writes : " In 1 85 7, the Sinaitic Codex was still lying in its 
time-honored retreat, where in fact it would be to-day, if the ordinary 
conventions concerning the rights of property had been scrupulously 
regarded." But Prof. C. R. Gregory, in his Prolegomena to Tischen- 
dorfs N. T. (Part I., p. 351), gives the letters fiom the Russian gov- 
ernment and from the archbishop and representative brethren of the 
monks themselves, which establish the truth as we have presented it 
above. 



192 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

has suffered many mutilations. It is indeed won- 
derful that a discovery, the whole history of which 
covers a period of at least fifteen years, should 
have resulted so happily at last, that not mere 
fragments, but a noble volume brings its testi- 
mony to the text of the Christian Scriptures. 
The finding of the codex was a great achieve- 
ment of man ; its preservation a marked provi- 
dence of God. 

There is a tradition that the first Christian em- 
peror, Constantine, commanded Busebius to have 
prepared fifty splendid copies of the Greek Script- 
ures, which he might present to the principal 
churches and monasteries of Christendom. The 
finest materials were to be used and only the best 
workmen were to be employed ; and when the 
volumes were completed they were to be trans- 
ported from Csesarea to Constantinople in govern- 
ment wagons under strong escort. These manu- 
scripts were inspected by the emperor himself, and 
then distributed according to his original purpose. 
It has been believed by some, and it is said that 
Tischendorf was at one time among the number, 
that the Sinaitic and Vatican codices may have 
been, if not of the original copies made by the 
royal command, yet only one remove from them. 
However this may be, it is quite certain that both 
these manuscripts came from an antiquity which 
would make such origin possible. The differences 



THE TWO OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 1 93 

in their text, however, seem to show that they are 
not so intimately related to each other ; and 
though Teschendorf gave it as his decided opinion, 
that the two manuscripts are not only of about the 
same age with the greater antiquity, if there is 
any difference, on the side of the Sinaitic Codex, but 
that the same scribe who wrote B is one of the 
four who wrote K ; other scholars doubt the latter 
conclusion. Many, as Tregelles, Scrivener, and 
Westcott and Hort believe that B is somewhat 
older than K, and the last named editors give the 
preference in general to its readings, while they 
consider the agreement of the two documents of 
prime authority. 



XII 

THE GREAT UNCIALS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY 



T 



EN manuscripts dating from the fifth century- 
are extant, known as follows : 



Codex Alexandrinus, sign A. 

Codex Bphraemi, sign C. 

Codex Guelpherbytanus B, sign Q. 

Codex Borgianus I. , sign T. 

Codex Woidii, sign T woi 

Codex Tischendorfianus II. , sign I 1, 2 ' 3 

Codex Musei Britannici, sign I b 

Codex Porfirianus Chiovensis, sign Q p or 2 

Of these codices, with the exception of A and 
C, little need be said in this chapter. Q is a 
palimpsest consisting of only thirteen leaves, con- 
taining two hundred and thirty-five verses of Iyuke 
and John. T is a fragment containing one 
hundred and seventy-seven verses from the same 
Gospels. T woi , a distinct manuscript but very 
similar to T, has also parts of the third and 
fourth Gospels. I represents seven different 
fragments of palimpsests, of which the first three 
belong to this century, and the others to the sixth 
194 



\\\\\\Y\ 



-mm 









\UUihb 









4-1 ! 



Sis 

1 W Si 

5 *a * 
51 

a* 



GREAT UNCIALS OF FIFTH CENTURY 1 95 

and seventh. I b , in the British Museum, con- 
sists of four leaves of a volume brought from the 
Nitrian desert, a palimpsest in which passages 
from the fourth Gospel are written over with 
hymns of - Severus in Syriac. Q p or 2 in the 
library of Archibishop Porfiri of St. Petersburg, is 
a papyrus document containing a few fragments 
of 1 Cor. 1 : 6, 7. All of these codices are of im- 
portance, but the two great manuscripts of this 
century are A and C. 

The Alexandrine manuscript A, as already re- 
marked upon a previous page, is of special interest 
as the first of all the great codices which was crit- 
ically studied and applied to the correction of the 
received text. It was presented to Charles L, in 
1628, by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, 
who brought it from Egypt. When the British 
Museum was established in 1753, it was sent im- 
mediately to this depository from the Royal col- 
lection, and it may be seen there to-day, preserved 
in a glass case with the leaves of the New Testa- 
ment open for inspection, though no hand is 
allowed to touch it except in rare instances and 
for the purposes of scholarly investigation. It is 
in four volumes, the last containing the New Tes- 
tament with many defects, beginning only with 
the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, at ver. 6 ; 
and the others, the Septuagint of the Old Testa- 
ment. At the close of the New Testament is 



196 THE PARCHMENTS OF THF, FAITH 

appended a work of rare value, for a long time the 
only extant copy of the earliest of the Apostolic 
Fathers, the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the 
Corinthians, together with a fragment of a second 
epistle, whose authorship is more doubtful. 

As to the exact origin of this manuscript noth- 
ing can be positively determined, except that it is 
Egyptian and probably Alexandrian. Notes upon 
the volumes assert that a Saint Thecla copied the 
whole with her own hand, but this is not likely 
for various reasons ; and the supposition of Tre- 
gelles is probably correct, that this legend of its 
origin arose from the fact that the first remaining 
page of the New Testament held the appointed 
lesson in the Greek church for the festival of St. 
Thecla, for this Scripture is in the twenty-fifth 
chapter of Matthew ; and perhaps the saint's name 
may once have been written at the top of the 
page, for the margins have been somewhat nar- 
rowed in the binding, and the name may thus 
have disappeared. 

The vellum of this ancient book is well pre- 
served, though in many places age has crumbled 
the leaves. The letters of the text are larger, 
rounder, and more elegant uncials than those of 
the Vatican Codex. There are no spaces between 
the words, no accents or breathings, and but few 
cases of punctuation or abbreviation. The text is 
divided into sections, however, which are noted in 



GREAT UNCIALS OF FIFTH CENTURY 1 97 

the margin. This is the oldest manuscript with 
capital letters by the first hand. In several 
places at the beginning of books the first line is 
written in vermillion. Bach page has two columns, 
each of fifty lines, with about twenty letters to the 
line. The first seven verses of John's Gospel put 
into corresponding English would present an ap- 
pearance as follows, serving to illustrate the large 
initials, and also a singular way in which a new 
section is marked by a break in the middle of a 
line, the first letter of the next line being large, 
like an initial, though it occurs in the middle of a 
word. Several contractions also occur, marked 
by the horizontal line drawn over the letters. 

1 NTHEBEGINNINGWASTHE WORD AND 
THEWORDWASWITHGD -ANDGDWAS 
THEWORD -HEWASINTHEBEGINNING 
WITHGDAIvIvTHINGSBYHIMWERE 
MADE ' ANDWITHOUTHIMWASM ADE 
NOTONETHINGTHATWASMADEINHIM 
UFBWAS-ANDTHBLIFBWASTHB 
LIGHTOFMNANDTHELIGHTINTHE 
DARKNESSSHINETH'ANDTHEDARK 

RNESSITNOTCOMPREHENDED THE 

EWASAMNSENTFROMGDTHENAMEOF 
HIMWASJOHN 'THISONEC AME 
FORAWITNESSTHATHEMIGHTWIT 
NESSCONCERNINGTHEIJGHT- 



198 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

The principal editions of this manuscript are 
that of Woide in 1786, and a splendid autotype 
fac simile in 1879-80, from which our illustration, 
page 138, is reduced. 

By far the most important of the biblical pal- 
impsests is the Codex C, or the Codex of Bph- 
raem the Syrian, now deposited in the National 
Library at Paris. Some time in the fifth cen- 
tury the volume was first made, containing prob- 
ably the whole of the Old and New Testaments. 
Where the book was used and how cared for none 
may now tell, though it was doubtless made in 
Egypt, and the hands of revisers indicate that it 
was long in Alexandria, or in the possession of 
some one who had been educated in the Alexan- 
drian schools. In the twelfth, perhaps the thir- 
teenth, century the writing was erased with a 
sponge, and in its place several works of Kphraem, 
a bishop and celebrated preacher who lived at 
Bdessa in the fourth century, were written upon 
the vellum. For this purpose the leaves were taken 
without any reference to their original positions 
in the biblical volume. It resulted that when 
the older writing began to appear again it was 
found to be in a most confused state. There were 
large omissions of the sacred text ; passages widely 
separated in the Scripture were found in juxta- 
• position ; leaves were often upside down. The 

book as it now exists contains two hundred and 



GREAT UNCIALS OF FIFTH CENTURY 1 99 

forty-nine leaves in all, one hundred and forty-five 
of which belong to the New Testament. But the 
whole of the second Epistle of John, the whole 
of the second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, 
thirty-seven chapters of the Gospels, ten of the 
Acts, forty-two of the Epistles, and eight of the 
Revelation are wanting. But the text which re- 
mains ranks hio-h as a critical authority, and the 
manuscript is one of the greatest literary treasures 
of Christendom. 

The book was first brought to Europe by Johan- 
nes L,ascaris, who had devoted much toil to the 
examination of libraries in the East. From his 
collection, after he died at Rome in 1535, it passed 
into the hands of Cardinal Nicola Ridolfi, of Flo- 
rence, and then, with his whole library, it was 
bought by Pietro Strozzi. Then the famous fam- 
ily of the Medici added it to their treasures, and 
it was carried by Catharine de Medici to France, 
that she might regale her spiritual life upon the 
sermons of Ephraem, which it contained. All 
this time the existence of the older and more 
precious writing remained unsuspected ; but in 
the latter part of the seventeenth century, Peter 
Allix, a careful student working in the Royal 
Library, to which the book had been transferred, 
thought he saw traces of a text beneath that of 
Ephraem. It was very faint, but closer investi- 
gation proved it to be there. The discovery 



200 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

caused much interest among scholars. Several 
passages were deciphered and were used in the 
reprint of Mill's Greek Testament, which ap- 
peared in 1 710. In 1830, I^achmann, a celebrated 
German critic, said that if any Parisian had the 
courage for the task, he could immortalize his 
name by deciphering and publishing the text of 
this Codex. Capperonier, a former head of the 
library had declared that no mortal could read the 
old writing. In 1834, a chemical preparation 
known as the Giobertine Tincture was applied to 
about one hundred leaves, bringing out the writ- 
ing somewhat more clearly, but spotting the pages 
badly. After this was done a critic named Fleck 
succeeded in reading many pages hitherto unde- 
cipherable. But in 1840, Tischendorf went to 
Paris and applied himself to the work with his 
characteristic skill, energy, and perseverance. 
From December of that year to September of 
1841 he worked assiduously, and in December 
of 1842 the results were published. The great 
scholar had been successful in reading almost 
every word, and he had noted even the revisions 
of the manuscript, announcing that no less than 
four hands had been employed to bring the text 
to its present condition, though the work of the 
fourth was very rare. It is one of the greatest of 
Tischendorf 's great achievements, and the work has 
added largely to our knowledge of the sacred text. 



XIII 

A CORRUPT CODEX AND AN ILLUSTRATED MAN- 
USCRIPT 

(Sixth Century) 

WITH the sixth century the number of the uncial 
manuscripts increases to twenty- four ; then 
in the two following centuries it falls of! somewhat 
strangely to nine in the seventh and eight in the 
eighth ; in the ninth century the number rises 
again to thirty-four ; but in the tenth it is dimin- 
ished to six. Very many of these manuscripts are 
mere fragments. Of those of the sixth century 
two of considerable importance are selected for 
description in this chapter, one especially inter- 
esting on account of its many interpolations ; the 
other as being the earliest illustrated manuscript 
extant. 

Codex Bezae, or D, is known also as the Co- 
dex Cantabrigiensis, because Beza, its discoverer, 
presented it to the University of Cambridge, Eng- 
land, where it is now the chief treasure of the 
library. Theodore Beza was a man eminent in 
the sixteenth century as a preacher, professor, 



202 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE EAITH 

and reformer. Early in his career he was ban- 
ished with other Protestants from France, but 
afterward he returned and among the attendants 
of Coligni became widely known as a man of 
learning. In 1562, he obtained this manuscript 
from a monastery in L,yons. It has been conject- 
ured that it was rescued from the flames when the 
city was sacked by the Huguenots under the Baron 
of Adrets, and that its preserver gave it to Beza, 
as at once a token of esteem and a compliment to 
his learning. Beza collated portions of the Codex 
for his own use, but in 1581 transferred it to the 
university, where it is now treasured. 

Codex Bezae dates from the sixth century, 
though some have thought it should be placed in 
the fifth. It is thus of much importance in text- 
ual criticism. It is a large quarto volume of four 
hundred and fifteen leaves, now very elegantly 
bound. Originally there were five hundred and 
twelve leaves. Nine of the leaves preserved do 
not belong to the original volume, but are as late 
as the tenth century. The Codex contains the 
Gospels and the Acts with omissions, and the 
order of the Gospels is Matthew, John, I^uke, and 
Mark. The text is composed of square upright 
uncials in a single column upon the left hand 
page, while a L,atin translation, by the same hand 
which wrote the Greek, occupies the right hand 
page. There are no spaces, accents, or breathings ; 



A CORRUPT CODEX 203 

but punctuation appears more frequently in the 
L,atin than in the Greek. This manuscript affords 
a good example of stichometrical writing — the 
text being so arranged that only a few words 
are contained in each line, to assist the reader in 
pronunciation and in dividing the text according 
to the sense with more ease than when the words 
have no spaces between them. 

This manuscript is the oldest which contains 
the passage relating the story of the woman taken 
in adultery (John 7 : 53-8 : 11). The Canterbury 
Revision puts this passage in brackets, with the 
note that most of the ancient authorities omit it, 
while those which contain it vary much from each 
other. But that it appears in this codex is evi- 
dence of an extremely early origin for the story 
and its incorporation in the Gospel, though doubt- 
less it was not written by the inspired author. 
The Acts contain no less than six hundred inter- 
polations, more or less extensive. In the second 
Gospel one passage occurs only in this codex, fol- 
lowing Ivuke 6 : 4, on the leaf usually kept open 
at Cambridge for the inspection of visitors. It 
runs thus : 

"On the same day he beheld a certain man 
working on the Sabbath, and said unto him, Man, 
blessed art thou if thou knowest what thou doest, 
but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a 
transgressor of the law." 



204 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

"I was present,' ' says Dr. Scrivener, "when 
this passage was shown at Cambridge to a learned 
Greek Archimandrite, Philippos Schulati, of Kus- 
tandje. He had never heard either of it or of the 
manuscript before, but after a moment's thought 
his comment was ready : ' This cannot be ; the 
Lord cursed no man.' " 

Codex Bezae is known by the sign D. The 
same letter is also applied to a copy of Paul's 
Epistles, No. 107 of the National Library in Paris, 
called the Codex Claromontanus, from Clermont 
in the north of France, where it was discovered 
by Beza twenty years after the more famous man- 
uscript, so often called by his own name, came 
into his possession. 

An extremely interesting manuscript of the 
sixth century is the superb codex discovered by the 
German scholars, Oscar von Gebhardt, of Gottin- 
gen, and Adolph Harnack, now of Berlin, who were 
pursuing researches in the interest of the Univer- 
sity of Leipzig, already so rich in ancient docu- 
ments through the labors of Tischendorf and 
others. They were on their way, in March of the 
year 1879, to the island of Sicily, when they 
diverged from their course to visit the little town 
of Rossano, a few miles from the shore of the Gulf 
of Taranto, which sets up into the southern coast 
of Italy. They hoped to find traces of certain 
writings of Hippolytus and others, which had 



A CORRUPT CODEX 205 

been reckoned anions the treasures of the convent 
that had formerly stood just outside the town. In 
this respect, however, they were doomed to dis- 
appointment. No one could show them any such 
books ; no one could tell them of libraries where 
they might be hidden. 

Finally, they received a hint of a certain an- 
cient volume that was in the possession of the 
Archbishop. They immediately proceeded to the 
episcopal residence, where they were courteously 
received, and their request to see the book was 
cordially granted. Conducted to the library, they 
were shown a thick quarto volume in a stout 
binding of black leather. Monsignor Pietro 
Cilento, the archbishop, laid it before them and 
opened it, turning leaf after leaf. What was their 
amaz2inent to see that it was an elegant purple 
manuscript of the Gospels, with double columns 
of silver text upon each page, the fir^st three lines 
of each Gospel written in gold, and with a large 
number of miniatures, or illustrations, interspersed, 
still preserving the rich and vivid colors. It was 
evidently of the sixth century, or, at the latest, 
the early part of the seventh. Doctors Gebhardt 
and Harnack begged permission to study the 
volume at length, and they devoted several weeks 
of residence at Rossano to collating the text and 
making fac similes of the pages for future publi- 
cation. Upon their return to Leipzig they issued 



2o6 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

a thin quarto containing a description of the 
volume, the circumstances attending its preserva- 
tion and discovery, and tracings of many of its 
plates. They gave it the sign I. 

The Codex Rossanensis has one hundred and 
eighty-eight leaves of vellum, containg the whole 
of the first Gospel, and all of Mark's to the middle 
of the fourteenth verse of the last chapter. It 
cannot be determined how much Scripture was 
originally contained in the volume, though it is 
likely that it had the Gospels complete. It now 
contains, in addition to Matthew and Mark, an 
epistle of Busebius to Carpianus, the chirography 
showing that it was not written by the same hand 
as the biblical portion. As already remarked, the 
document is of only secondary importance for the 
criticism of the text of the New Testament, since 
it agrees mainly with the manuscripts of the fifth 
and later centuries, rather than with those of the 
fourth. The discoverers state that the text is an 
agreement, to a surprising degree, with that of 
Codex N, which is mentioned below, that other 
purple manuscript written in silver and gold, 
which was the most important of all thus adorned 
until this treasure-trove came to light at Rossano. 

This manuscript is the earliest but one to con- 
tain the words at the close of the Lord's Prayer in 
Matt. 6 : 14 : " For thine is the kingdom and the 
power and the glory, forever, Amen." See, how- 



A CORRUPT CODEX 207 

ever, page 278 of this book for earlier evidence of 
this doxology. 

But the remarkable pictures in this volume 
make it of the greatest interest not only to the 
art-historian, but even to the casual reader. In 
the book published at Leipzig, by the discoverers, 
after two purple plates showing passages of the 
text in /he simile, and certain signs of contractions 
and marginal helps to the reading, seventeen out- 
line plates follow, showing the title-page to the 
whole volume, an ornamental circle enclosing 
miniatures of the four evangelists, and also the 
title-page to the second Gospel. If we take ex- 
amples of the pictures, we may speak especially 
of the entry into Jerusalem, with the Saviour 
seated upon the ass, the people strewing clothing 
and palms in the way, one man still up in the 
palm tree gathering the boughs, and on the ex- 
treme right, the city of Jerusalem with the people 
leaning forth from windows and towers and the 
children singing hosannas before the gate. Another 
plate shows Judas carrying back the thirty pieces 
of silver to the two high priests, while in the same 
picture, at the extreme right, the same traitor is 
seen hanging from the bough of a tree. This 
synchronous method of representing consecutive 
actions is also employed in the plate which shows 
the agony in Gethsemane, for at the right the 
Saviour bows in prayer alone, and at the left he 



208 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

is waking the three disciples from their sleep. 
Two plates show the method in which the lord's 
Supper was administered in the sixth century, the 
disciples going in procession to receive the ele- 
ments from the lord's hands, while another plate 
gives the original form with the whole company 
reclining upon couches around a semi-circular 
table, Judas reaching forth his hand to fulfill the 
Iyord's word, " Whosoever dippeth with me in the 
dish, the same shall betray me." The cleansing 
of the temple gives us an interesting indication of 
the date of the manuscript, for the rude sketch 
of the temple, hardly more than a mere shed, 
gives a composite structure in which two of the 
columns are Doric, and the third a perfect instance 
of the Corinthian. The artist must have had be- 
fore his eye those churches, of which some ex- 
amples are yet to be seen in Italy, that had drawn 
upon the ruins of the old heathen temples for 
their adornment. As L,iibke has shown in his 
history of art, this heterogeneous architecture, 
growing out of poverty of such materials, belongs 
to a comparatively late date. The earlier attempts 
to change the old basilicas into churches, and to 
construct new buildings like them, found a great 
wealth of spoils from the ruined heathen temples, 
which enabled the builders to use, for instance, 
all Doric or all Corinthian pillars in the same 
colonnade. But " the later the date, the poorer, 








a m, 



A. 



|«1 EM® So 



Jesus Cleansing the Temple and The Good Samaritan. 

(From the Codex Rossanensis.) 

Page 208. 



A CORRUPT CODEX 209 

ruder, and more heterogeneous they become," 
and the same arcade exhibits the most varied 
styles and materials crowded together. It is evi- 
dent, therefore, that this picture must have been 
drawn after this kind of architecture had become 
known, and no matter how early the text of 
this codex must be placed, this one picture 
would be sufficient to prove that the artist 
who illuminated the volume must have done his 
work at a period approximate to the date assigned 
by the discoverers. Text and plates agree in 
marking the time at which the book was made. 

We have chosen for our reproduction of these 
outlines two plates, the one showing the cleansing 
of the temple to which reference has just been 
made. The other illustrates the parable of the 
good Samaritan, and is an instance of the double 
picture. The good Samaritan, evidently con- 
ceived by the artist to be the Saviour himself, is 
ministering to the wounded man, and an angel is 
introduced to assist him. Then in the right-hand 
part of the picture the concluding part of the 
parable is depicted ; the rescued man is sitting 
upon the ass, and the rescuer is paying the money 
into the hand of the inn-keeper. The art is rude 
both in conception and execution but the meaning 
of the pictures appears at once. 

Shortly after the discovery of the Codex Ros- 
sanensis a rumor went abroad that a similar 



210 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

document had been discovered, and in 1881 an 
account of it was published by the Abbe Duchesne 
in the "Bulletin Critique" of Paris. The new 
manuscript proved to be indeed very similar to 
the one found at Rossano. It contained the Gos- 
pels of Matthew and Mark, and was written in 
silver letters upon purple vellum. The Abbe 
Duchesne had learned of the existence of this book 
while he was in the Isle of Patmos studying a few 
important leaves of another purple codex, and 
upon his return to Europe he sent another scholar, 
M. Pierre Batiffol, to find it if he could. It was 
found at Berat in the interior of Albania, and is 
in the possession of the Archbishop Anthimus 
Alexoudis, who had written an account of it pre- 
vious to its announcement to European scholars. 
It has been given the sign #. M. Batiffol as- 
signs the codex to the sixth century, but Prof. J. 
R. Harris thinks the date too early by perhaps a 
century, which may also be the case, he thinks, with 
the Codex Rossanensis. This new codex has a 
text of much higher character than 2 y and be- 
longs probably to the so-called Ferrar group of 
manuscripts, which are supposed to have been de- 
rived from a common lost original of great value. 
Occasionally it adds a considerable passage which 
has only survived in a few other very ancient and 
rich authorities, like Codex Bezae, or the Cu- 
retonian Syriac, and it is thus seen to be of great 



A CORRUPT CODEX 211 

importance. It belongs to the Church of St. 
George at Berat. L,ike the Codex Rossanensis, 
it has two columns to a page, with seventeen lines 
to a column. Tables of chapters, and Busebian 
and Ammonian sections are marked in the usual 
way. It is not complete even in the two Gospels 
it contains, for it begins with Matthew 6 : 3 and 
ends with Mark 14 : 62. Other manuscripts were 
also found at Berat : a fine cursive of the eleventh 
century, containing the Gospels ; another cursive 
of the Gospels, of the twelfth century ; a splendid 
purple manuscript of the Gospels, with gold let- 
ters, the writing in a single column to a page and 
upon four hundred and thirteen leaves, probably 
dating from the tenth century. Two other fine 
cursives were also found by M. Batiffol. " Six 
new manuscripts in all, and one of them — a 
lion ! ' ' How many more may yet remain hidden 
in this distant region, who may say ? 

After the sixth century, many documents of much 
importance are extant. One such codex as the fa- 
mous L,, of the eighth century, the Codex Regius, 
is royal indeed, though of rude workmanship and 
much injured by use. " By far the most remark- 
able document of its age and class," says Scriv- 
ener of it, and its authority is high among the 
witnesses to the text. But other manuscripts must 
be passed in silence, except as very peculiar char- 
acteristics are to be noticed. 



XIV 

CURIOUS FRAGMENTS AND DISCOVERIES 

THE ignorance and carelessness of some of the 
custodians of these documents in the monas- 
teries of the Bast can hardly be credited. It has 
already been narrated how the invaluable Codex 
Sinaiticus was barely saved from the names at 
St. Catherine's, and the practice of washing out 
the ink to replace the older text with a new one 
in the palimpsests shows the same lack of appre- 
ciation of the value of the documents. Many 
pages might be written detailing similar careless- 
ness, and showing the skill that in later times has 
discovered and rescued valuable treasures, but 
only a few instances can be given here. 

The Codex N, or the Purple Manuscript, as 
it is called, because for a long time it was the most 
important text in our possession written upon pur- 
ple vellum, is in four parts. Many manuscripts 
have been discovered thus made of beautifully 
dyed skins, and with the text in silver letters. 
Codex N has the names of the deity, wherever 
they occur, written in gold, but the main body of 
the text, which was once silver, is now turned 
black with age. Coming down to us from the 



CURIOUS FRAGMENTS AND DISCOVERIES 213 

latter part of the sixth century, it is no wonder 
that it has suffered dilapidation in the long inter- 
val. Four leaves found their way at an early day 
into the British Museum, and were collated by 
Wetstein on his visit to England in 17 15. Six 
leaves belong to the Vatican library, and were 
first published in full by Tischendorf in 1846, and 
were shown by him to belong to the same manu- 
script. Two leaves had long been known in 
Vienna, and had received attention from several 
scholars, who had published imperfect collations 
of the fragment. In or about the year 1864, Sakke- 
lion discovered at the monastery of St. John, in 
Patmos, thirty-three other leaves containing parts 
of Mark's Gospel, and clearly belonging to the 
same document. Probably the fewer leaves so 
widely scattered in London, Vienna, and Rome, 
were stolen from Patmos, and had been hastily 
disposed of by the thief as his opportunities oc- 
curred. The Abbe" Duchesne, already referred 
to as the discoverer of the Purple Manuscript 
Beratinus, was in Patmos studying this Codex N 
when he was first told of Beratinus. There he 
collated the fragments discovered in 1864, render- 
ing an invaluable assistance to our knowledge of 
Codex Purpureus by these labors, so that now 
these widely separated fragments are as well 
understood as if they were united in their original 
form. 



214 ?HE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Another instance that bears tribute to the skill 
of modern scholarship is the identification of two 
fragments as parts of one document, though sep- 
arated by the distance between I/mdon and Ham- 
burg. Two folio leaves containing parts of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, and written in bright red 
ink, whence they were called the Codex Ruber, 
or Red Manuscript, M p , were in the Public li- 
brary of Hamburg. There the great scholar Gries- 
bach became acquainted with them. In the British 
Museum, among the Harleian collection, was a 
volume of comparatively little value, and in the 
preparation of this volume some ancient vellum 
had been used for fly-leaves. When Griesbach 
visited L,ondon, he at once recognized these fly- 
leaves, covered with the peculiar red writing, as 
fellows of the Codex M p upon the continent. He 
collated them and published the results. They 
contained parts of the first and second Corinthians, 
making the whole number of verses in both frag- 
ments one hundred and ninety-six. Tischendorf 
afterward discovered another leaf. 

Perhaps the most wonderful exhibition of skill 
is shown in the rescue of four leaves of Mark's 
Gospel, at Trinity College, Cambridge. These 
leaves were in twenty -seven differ e7it pieces, and 
had been employed in the binding of a volume of 
the works of Gregory of Nazianzus. The librarian 
of the University, Mr. Bradshaw, detected the 



H 



■o3 



- < ^ 



s 




CURIOUS FRAGMENTS AND DISCOVERIES 215 

true character of the fragments, picked them out 
of the binding, arranged them in order between 
sheets of glass, and so preserved to us a valuable 
reading of several verses of Mark, from the early 
part of the ninth century. This codex, W d , in 
its present condition has been photographed and 
published, and our illustration shows two of the 
four leaves as they are restored. The text is very 
similar to Codices X, B, D, L,, J, and one reading, 
Mark 7 : 33, appears to be unique : u He took him 
aside from the multitude privately and spat upon 
his fingers, and put them into the ears of the deaf 
man, and he touched the tongue of the man of 
thick speech." 

It is not infrequent that the bindings of books 
have thus employed valuable fragments, probably 
in a multitude of cases eluding discovery, and in 
many instances almost depriving us of them, but 
yielding them up at last. Codex O, or Mosquen- 
sis, at Moscow, is composed of eight leaves thus 
used in binding Chrysostom's "Homilies" ; and 
the Codex Coislinianus of Paul's epistles, the 
whole number of leaves now known being twenty- 
nine, was also rescued from the binding of other 
books. This codex is widely separated : twelve 
leaves are in Paris, two at Moscow, four in one 
library and two in another at St. Petersburg, and 
nine are at Mount Athos. 

Many other instances might be given, but these 



2l6 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

are sufficient to show how ignorant or careless the 
custodians of these documents were in the Middle 
Ages, and how skillful modern scholarship is in 
discovering and making use of what has been so 
nearly lost. Narratives are told by travelers of 
the strange confusion and neglect observable in 
Eastern monasteries to-day where the search for 
valuable documents has been prosecuted. A 
scholar, 1 who visited a convent in the Nitrian 
Desert, in Egypt, was shown a sort of vaulted 
cellar, whose only entrance was through a trap in 
the floor above, and the unlighted apartment was 
heaped with old volumes and loose leaves of every 
description. The monks gave him a candle and 
a stick, and he was left to stir up the rubbish as 
he pleased, pursuing investigations which resulted 
in the discovery of several valuable works of vari- 
ous kinds. Another traveler, having a curiosity 
to see the monks at their devotions, was roused 
early from sleep, and going to the chapel found 
its floor dotted at regular intervals with huge 
books. Wondering what they could mean, he 
was soon satisfied by seeing the bare-footed monks 
enter for their matins, each one jumping up on a 
book to keep his feet from contact with the cold 
stone floor while he prayed. The traveler de- 
parted, had some warm hassocks made and sent 

1 Archdeacon Tattam, as more particularly related on a later page, 
the " Curetonian Syriac Version.' ' 



r\ 



CURIOUS FRAGMENTS AND DISCOVERIES 21 7 

back to the convent, for which the monks were 
quite willing to exchange their ancient volumes. 
Still another scholar details the rescue of certain 
scraps of manuscript which had been kept only 
to cover the mouths of pickle-jars. With such 
treatment the only wonder is that so many 
precious fragments have been delivered from 
oblivion, and are now contributing to our knowl- 
edge of the Scriptures, and of other departments 
of learning. 

Two other codices, of the sixth century, may 
be mentioned merely. Both are palimpsests. 

In the year 1847, about forty manuscripts of a 
large number that had been found by Archdeacon 
Tattam in the convents of the Nitrian Desert, in 
Egypt, were placed in the British Museum, and 
were entrusted to the care of a discerning scholar, 
the Rev. William Cureton. One of these docu- 
ments was discovered to be a palimpsest of much 
importance. Two ancient works had been ex- 
punged for the sake of providing vellum for a new 
treatise, a work of Severus of Antioch, against 
Grammaticus. The two older works were por- 
tions of the Iliad with a fragment of Euclid, and 
a part of the Gospel of Luke. This fragment of 
the Gospel was studied by Tregelles and Tischen- 
dorf, and at the suggestion of the latter was 
given the sign R. Canon Cureton published it in 
1858, with a translation and valuable notes. It 



2l8 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

is said that the older text is so very faint that it 
can only be read upon a bright day, and with a 
very powerful lens to bring out certain portions 
that are unusually obscure. In some places the 
erased writing can only be discerned by holding 
the page between the eye and the light, and 
catching thus the marks of the stylus where the 
vellum was scratched by it a little thinner than 
elsewhere. The detection of such a text testifies 
to the exceeding skill of the scholars. Among 
this lot of manuscripts were also found the Syriac 
Gospels, which are known by the name of the 
Curetonian Syriac, of which mention will again 
be made under the head of versions. 

The only other palimpsest of which special 
mention may here be made is the Codex Dubun- 
Exsis, Z. As its name indicates it is in Dub- 
lin, in the library of Trinity College. It contains, 
in addition to a part of the prophecy of Isaiah 
and certain orations of Gregory of Xazianzus, a 
large portion of the Gospel of Matthew. Dr. 
Barrett, a Fellow of the college, was one day 
examining the manuscript when he thought he 
discerned very faint traces of letters beneath the 
principal text. A more careful inspection con- 
vinced him and others of the truth of his dis- 
covery, and after long study Dr. Barrett published 
an edition of the New Testament portion in 1801. 
The work was unsatisfactory, however, and in 



CURIOUS FRAGMENTS AND DISCOVERIES 219 

1853, Tregelles devoted himself to the task. The 
same chemical process that had been used on the 
Codex Ephraem was applied with perfect success, 
and the older text became plainly legible. The 
value of this codex is great, since it dates from the 
sixth century. 

Several fragments were found in 1889, by Pro- 
fessor Harris, at Mt. Sinai, which are of great 
antiquity, and are the merest fractions of former 
splendid books. In his work, " Biblical Frag- 
ments from Mt. Sinai," he gives an account of 
these curious and valuable bits of text, as well as 
of the more considerable portions of Scripture dis- 
covered. A single leaf containing two verses of 
Numbers thirty-two, dates from the seventh cen- 
tury ; a few words are rescued that are very simi- 
lar to the Vatican Codex, and are undoubtedly of 
the fourth century, while a separate page with 
passages from Judges and Ruth, also from the 
fourth century, probably belongs to the same 
original document as the other of that date. 
Nine little fragments are nailed upon a board 
and make a document of value, the very delicate 
writing being on extremely thin vellum, and dat- 
ing from the fourth century. Thus shreds and 
fragments are of use in their testimony to the 
sacred text. 



XV 

THE CURSIVES OR MINUSCULES 

IN an earlier chapter (IX.) it was said that the 
manuscripts are divided into two great classes, 
according to the characters in which they are 
written. Thus far attention has been given only 
to uncials. The second class is composed of 
cursives or minuscules, written in a current, small 
letter. The change from one style of writing to 
the other was gradual. The capitals became less 
elegantly made; they were a little inclined, then 
became smaller ; and finally a distinct method 
was employed in which the characters could be 
written far more easily and rapidly, the small 
letters of ordinary literature. All manuscripts 
written thus are of comparatively late date, not 
earlier in any case than the ninth century. They 
are very numerous, and a few of them are of great 
importance. Only about one hundred and fifty 
have been fully collated, although many more 
have been subjected to careful study. The cur- 
sives are distinguished by the Arabic numerals, 
as Codex 33, Codex 61. It is impossible to give 
a complete list of them in these pages, but such a 
list with much information concerning each that 



THE CURSIVES OR MINUSCULES 221 

has been published will be found in the fourth 
edition of Scrivener's u Plain Introduction." The 
second part of Dr. C. R. Gregory's ' ' Prolego- 
mena " to Tischendorf 's New Testament also 
affords the fullest and most exact account of the 
minuscules, and its publication was greeted with 
great interest. A few of the cursives may be 
enumerated here. 

Codex i, or Basiliensis, so called from Basle, 
where it is deposited, was the first cursive to 
render important aid to the criticism of the New 
Testament. Erasmus employed it in the prepara- 
tion of his Greek text, and yet he did not value 
it as it deserved, and its influence in his work was 
comparatively slight. The text of the Gospels 
adheres closely to that of the uncials B and 
L and others of the same class, and is highly 
esteemed by critics. The volume was once bril- 
liantly illuminated, containing portraits among 
which were those of the Emperor Leo the Wise 
and his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus, but with 
the single exception of one before Luke's Gospel, 
all the miniatures were stolen previous to i860. 

Codex 33 is called the Queen of the Cursives. 
It is as late as the eleventh century, but only four 
or five uncials of the earliest dates are superior 
to it for critical purposes. The manuscript has 
suffered greatly from want of care, the pages have 
decayed with dampness, the leaves have stuck 



222 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

together so closely that in many cases they have 
been separated only at the cost of transferring all 
the ink from one page to another, so that the text 
can be read only by this set-off, backward, and 
mingled with the original writing of the opposite 
leaf. Tregelles says that the task of deciphering 
it tried his eyesight more than any other work 
of the kind that he had ever done. Yet the whole 
document has been accurately read, and is of great 
value. It is a beautiful folio in the National 
Library at Paris. 

Codex 61, or Montfortianus, so called from one 
of its former possessors, Rev. Thomas Montfort, 
D. d., of Cambridge, is now in the library of 
Trinity College, Dublin. This manuscript is of 
special interest as respects its testimony to the 
interpolated verse in the first Epistle of John 
(5 : 7), about the " Three Heavenly Witnesses." 
It happens that the page containing this verse is 
covered with a sort of glaze, or gloss, as if to pro- 
tect the writing from injury, and it is the only 
page of the four hundred and fifty-five which is so 
treated. A witty Irish prelate quoted by Scrivener 
says of this circumstance: "We often hear that 
the text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses is a 
gloss, and any one who will go into the College 
Library may see as much for himself ! " When 
Erasmus published his earliest editions of the New 
Testament he did not insert this verse and was 



THE CURSIVES OR MINUSCULES 223 

severely criticised for the omission, whereupon he 
pledged himself that whenever the verse could be 
found in a good Greek manuscript he would 
insert it. Accordingly in his third edition he 
printed the verse (in 1522), with the note that he 
had found it in a Greek manuscript, which he 
called the Codex Britannicus, but which has been 
identified as this Codex 61. The document is 
further noteworthy as having the Revelation 
copied (probably) from Codex 69, or the Codex of 
Leicester, which will be described next. These 
codices were both at one time in the possession of 
William Chark, and it would be a strong tempta- 
tion to have the opportunity of supplying such a 
defect in the one from the text of the other. 

Codex 69, Leicestrensis, belongs to the town of 
Leicester in England, and is treasured in the Town 
Library, to which it was given by a clergyman, 
Thomas Heyne, who had himself received it from 
William Chark. It is a folio volume, with leaves 
both of paper and vellum so arranged as to give 
two of parchment followed by three of paper in 
regular order. The writing is rough and in some 
places almost illegible from carelessness ; it was 
done with the calamus, or reed pen, 'such as is 
spoken of in John's third epistle (ver. 13) in- 
stead of the stylus, comparatively few of the 
cursive manuscripts being written with this in- 
strument. The codex dates from the fourteenth 



224 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

century, but though it is so late it contains many 
readings varying from the received text, and 
scholars place it in critical value above the later 
uncials. It is also one of the few cursives contain- 
ing the whole of the New Testament. It is very 
similar to three other important cursives, Codex 
13 of the Gospels at Paris, Codex 124 at Vienna, 
and Codex 346 at Milan, and it is believed "that 
the four must have been made from the same 
original, whose date was probably as early as the 
sixth century. These cursives are therefore a 
good example of the critical law by which a 
manuscript is valued for its testimony not accord- 
ing to its own age alone, but far more according 
to the age and value of the text it represents. It 
will be seen readily that if these codices were 
copied directly from a document of the sixth cen- 
tury their witness to the text of that date, espe- 
cially as it is fourfold, must be very strong. 

Codex 95 is interesting alike because it was so 
nearly lost, and because it affords what Tregelles 
and Alford considered one of the most valuable 
cursive texts of the Revelation in existence. It 
contains the Revelation alone and has an epitome 
of the commentary of Arethas, in a cramped and 
indistinct text, which ends with the eleventh verse 
of the twentieth chapter. This was the manuscript, 
already referred to, which was rescued by L,ord de 
la Zouche in 1837, at Caracalla on Mount Athos, 



THE CURSIVES OR MINUSCULES 225 

where it would soon have been used as a covering 
for pickle-jars. 

Lately Prof. J. Rendel Harris brought to the 
notice of the New Testament students an interest- 
ing collection of Greek manuscripts in the cursive 
character in America, brought from Canea in 
Crete about fifty years ago, and now owned by the 
sons of their purchaser, Prof. Benton of Newark, 
in Delaware, and Mr. R. A. Benton of Sewickley, 
in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania. Four of these 
manuscripts are found to be of sufficient value to 
be noted among the classified codices. The one 
which is most important is one of the very early 
cursives of the Gospels, not later than the tenth 
century. It has uncial titles of the several chap- 
ters in a beautiful hand and is described as an 
exquisite specimen of exact calligraphy. 

The number of known cursives has largely in- 
creased in late years. It is likely that the dis- 
covery of these documents will proceed even more 
rapidly, at least for a time, and that large num- 
bers of the cursives and not a few uncials will 
yet be added to the present resources. 



XVI 

VERSIONS AND FATHERS 

J F the translations of the New Testament have 
A not been of the almost snpreme importance 
that attached to the Septuagint Greek of the Old 
Testament in the spreading and the preservation 
of the religion of which they are the written 
records, it is nevertheless true that they are of 
very great value as witnesses to the sacred text. 
Several of these versions were made at a time 
long anterior to the date of oar earliest extant 
Greek manuscripts, and the Greek text which 
they translate must have been to a certainty very 
ancient. There are perhaps a dozen of these 
important witnesses that stand ready for the 
questioning of modern science. 

But while such evidence is of a high order, 
there are certain cautions to be observed. We 
always wish to know something of the character 
of any alleged witnesses. How trustworthy are 
they in themselves as well as in the circumstances 
which have made them witnesses ? A man may 
have been eye-witness to some fact, but his general 
character may be such that his word cannot be 
trusted for an instant. In the case of this class 
226 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 227 

of documents it is not enough to know that they 
come very near to the original Scriptures ; it must 
be asked whether their own text is trustworthy, 
and whether the foreign tongue has caught the 
exact meaning of the original. 

Copyists of translations are liable to the same 
faults as copyists of the Greek manuscripts 
themselves, while there is the additional diffi- 
culty that the translator brings to his work 
upon the original text a foreign mind, con- 
ceptions alien to those of the first writer, idioms 
wholly unlike those which he has to translate, 
and shades of meaning in the words he may 
use as equivalents which do not inhere in the 
original terms. For example, the very writing of 
the New Testament autographs themselves had 
the difficulty of assigning Greek words to Jewish 
ideas which had thus far had their native expres- 
sion only in Hebrew and Aramaic. As we have 
seen, the religious books of the Jews were 
in Hebrew, and their common speech was 
Aramaic, so that in writing in Greek it might be 
a very important question just how to make the 
strange Greek word correspond to the Jewish con- 
ception. L,et the reader try a simple experiment, 
and he will understand the difficulty. The words 
in English, / love my honze, convey a very dis- 
tinct idea to an American ; they summon to the 
mind the peace and love and all the tender graces 



228 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

that make an American home delightful. But a 
Frenchman would hardly have the same idea of a 
home, and to a native of Dahomey the words 
would scarcely be intelligible in their first sense. 
So in our Scriptures the word law, so often used, 
might have one meaning to the Jew, another to 
the Roman, a third to the dweller in Gaul or 
Britain ; it would perhaps take a nice sense of dis- 
crimination for the writer in Greek to apply the 
exact word which would be an equivalent of the 
Jewish conception. L,et the case then be applied 
to the Syrian or Arabic, the Coptic or Abyssinian, 
the Armenian or Slavonic tongues ; each trans- 
lation would have its own peculiar difficulty, and 
in some cases might quite miss the meaning, and 
therefore the language of a word or passage. It 
is plain that a translation must be cross-ques- 
tioned, and its evidence accepted only as it is 
proved reliable. But all of these difficulties dis- 
appear as the translations are compared with each 
other, and with the Greek manuscripts which 
have been the theme of the preceding pages. 
The same errors of a copyist will not be likely to 
occur in two or more different documents. The 
very differences of conception in different lan- 
guages will correct each other, and lead almost 
without fail to the proper reading of the original. 
One trouble is still more difficult to correct, the 
tampering with the integrity of the version-texts 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 229 

themselves. These have suffered the common lot 
of manuscripts in corrections, emendations, and 
marginal notes, so that a great need is found to- 
day of critical examination of these documents 
with a view to their own textual integrity. 

The Christian faith spread with great rapidity 
through all known countries. The early journeys 
of St. Paul through Asia Minor and to Greece 
and Italy, the unrecorded journeys of the other 
apostles, and the various letters of them all, car- 
ried the good news to the farthest lands. 
Churches sprang into being everywhere, and as 
time went on the demand for the Scriptures both 
of the Old Testament and the New became uni- 
versal. We have already described in the case of 
the former how for example the Syriac version 
came into being, and how Jerome translated both 
Testaments into the Latin of the Vulgate. But 
the same need called aloud from Africa, from 
Armenia, from the middle and north of Europe. 
The day of Pentecost had been prophetic of the 
time when. " every man in his own tongue " must 
hear the word of life, and thus at last the fulfill- 
ment came, and each country had its own Bible, 
the beginning of the great work which in our own 
time has translated the word into three hundred 
and eighty-five different languages and dialects. 

The principal versions are two of the first half 
of the second century, the Old or African Latin, 
u 



230 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

and the Curetonian Syriac ; two of the latter 
half of the second century, the Memphitic and the 
Thebaic ; two of the third century, the. European 
Latin, and the Peshito Syriac ; four of the fourth 
century, the Italian Latin, the Vulgate, the 
Gothic, and the Ethiopic ; two of the fifth century, 
the Armenian and the Jerusalem Syriac ; and 
one of the sixth century, the Philoxenian Syriac. 
The Harclean Syriac and other versions are of 
later dates. 

The Old Latin is a term that has been some- 
what loosely applied to all the Latin antedating 
Jerome's Vulgate, but it should be used only of 
the African translation, which was the earliest of 
all versions in this language. At the time in 
which the Old Latin was made, perhaps at Carth- 
age, but surely from that western province of 
Africa of which Carthage was the principal city, 
Rome was still using a Greek liturgy, and its 
church was presided over by bishops with Greek 
names and who wrote in the Greek language. 
The Christians around Carthage, however, spoke 
Latin, and Tertullian, who wrote at Carthage at 
the end of the second century, refers to the general 
use of a Latin New Testament, and quotes pas- 
sages from it. This would place the date of the 
version certainly as early as the middle of that 
century. In addition to the quotations by Ter- 
tullian, we have those by Cyprian, who seems to 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 23 1 

have used it exclusively, so that the peculiarities 
of the version are pretty well understood, and the 
extant manuscripts which show these peculiarities 
are thus distinguished. It is probable, however, 
that the African Latin was very variable, thus 
accounting for the differences in the Latin texts 
that are supposed to have come from it, like the 
Italian Latin, and others. Augustine writes of 
the " boundless variety of Latin translations," and 
Jerome speaks of there being "almost as many 
types as codices." In fact, at this time, a great 
freedom was observed with reference to copying 
the texts, a translator using a wide judgment and 
annotations often finding their way into the text 
itself. Among all these varied translations 
Augustine refers to one text, which he designates 
the Itala, as more literal than any other ; but the 
term Itala has since and more correctly been di- 
verted from this, its first application, to designate 
the Italian Latin of the fourth century, in which 
Jerome set out to produce the Vulgate. The Afri- 
can Latin has several witnesses extant besides the 
quotations already noted, as in the Codex Bobiensis, 
k, of the fifth century, the fine Codex Palatinus, 
e, of the fifth century, and some others. 

The Etiropean Latin 1 is the earliest Latin 
translation used in Europe, and is represented by 

1 We now follow these translations by groups rather than by then- 
dates. 



232 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

extant manuscripts lettered a, b, c, ff, etc. Per- 
haps it was not an independent effort, but the Old 
Latin may have crossed the sea and become the 
parent of the versions henceforth to be used in 
Europe. This European Latiji perpetuated itself 
in many codices, and in course of time suffered a 
revision, which became known as the Italian 
Latin, or as it is now generally termed the Itala, 
which, as we have said, often groups all the Eatin 
versions preceding Jerome's Vulgate under its one 
name. 

The Vulgate of Jerome has been described 
upon a preceding page, where it was necessary to 
introduce the subject in connection with the Old 
Testament. It need only be added that the 
manuscripts of the Vulgate in the libraries of 
Western Europe are almost countless, and from 
the study of some of them Eachmann and Tre- 
gelles have succeeded, by indefatigable labors, in 
restoring very nearly the original ' text as it came 
from Jerome's hand. The codices of the Vulgate 
best known and used for criticism, are generally 
cited by a few letters abbreviating their names, 
as "am.," for Codex Amiatanus, brought into 
the Eaurentian Eibrary at Florence from the Cis- 
tercian Monastery of Monte Amiata in Tuscany, 
and of date from the sixth to the ninth century ; 
"fuld." or u fu.," the Codex Fuldensis, in the 
Abbey of Fulda in Hesse Cassel, written about 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 233 

the middle of the sixth century; "tol.," the 
Codex Toletanus at Toledo ; "harl.," the Codex 
Harleianus, much valued by Westcott for critical 
merit, etc. 

The Syriac group of versions is very interesting, 
though its earliest history is more indefinite than 
that of any other group, not excepting the Latin. 
It is, however, perfectly evident that the Syrian 
Christians received the Scriptures in their own 
tongue at a very early date, and the Syriac trans- 
lations represent a Greek text far older than that 
of the oldest Greek manuscript extant, and cer- 
tainly very near to the autographs of the apos- 
tolic age. 1 

The Cureto7iian Syriac is now considered the 
older Syriac version * the Peshito the later, or re- 
vised text. The Curetonian Syriac has been 
known only through one example until very 
lately (April, 1893), when another document con- 
taining the same text was discovered at Mt. Sinai 
by an English lady. Both discoveries were of a 
remarkable character. In the seventeenth cen- 
tury in England a spirited controversy arose con- 
cerning the epistles of Ignatius, seven of which 
were extant, and five that were falsely ascribed to 
him. The nature of this controversy need not 
occupy the attention now, but it is mentioned to 
explain the circumstance that an anxious search 

1 See preceding pages, 109-111. 



234 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

was instituted about that time for new literary 
relics of Ignatius, which was continued for many 
years. Through the influence of Archbishop 
Ussher, all the sea captains who left England for 
the Orient were commanded to bring home at 
least one manuscript, in the hope that something 
might be found to assist the scholars in determin- 
ing this and other great questions. Most of these 
captains brought back copies of the Koran, which 
they could obtain with ease, and were of no value 
to biblical scholars. Letters were also sent to the 
principal Greek ecclesiastics in the East, asking 
them to assist in the search for valuable docu- 
ments. One locality in particular was considered 
to be of hopeful fertility in this respect, absolutely 
barren as it was in every other. The great Ni- 
trian Desert lay about seventy miles northward 
from Cairo, a resort from the earliest times of re- 
ligious recluses, who had been drawn thither by 
some superstition that their holiness would be 
promoted by bathing in the water of the adjacent 
lakes, which was strongly impregnated with nitre. 
It is said that no less than three hundred and 
sixty monasteries were once grouped in this 
region. In a time of common danger many of 
these were surrounded by a wall, which served at 
once to ward off danger from without and to 
solidify the brotherhood within. It was believed 
in Europe that this fortified monastery might 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 235 

contain many valuable literary treasures, placed 
here for safe keeping as well as for the use of the 
monks, and in 1679 the Rev. Robert Huntington 
sought the place, but was not permitted to visit 
the libraries. He reported, however, that he had 
seen enough to confirm the expectations in 
Europe. Some years afterward, Pope Clement 
XL , sent a native Syrian to the Nitrian Desert 
upon the same errand. But though he was re- 
ceived cordially, he was allowed only to visit a 
cellar which was full of manuscripts that the 
monks themselves could not read. Forty of these 
parchments were sold to the visitor, and he took 
them to Rome where they were deposited in the 
Vatican Library and, as was to be expected at 
that time, nothing more was heard of them. 
Other attempts were made with the only result of 
exciting the interest and cupidity of the Nitrian 
monks, who now obstinately refused to part with 
any of their treasures. In 1838, however, Arch- 
deacon Tattam himself went to Egypt, and suc- 
ceeded in persuading the monks to sell him such 
books as did not have written in them any curses 
— such as we have described upon a former page, 
126 — forbidding any one to sell them. He was 
taken to a vaulted room which had neither door 
nor windows, and could be entered only by a trap 
door from above. He was lowered down into this 
cellar, furnished with a candle, and left to make 



236 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

his own investigation of a large mass of manu- 
scripts covering the floor to a depth of* one or two 
feet. He secured from this room and some other 
places five hundred and fifty documents in all, 
which he took away to England. Forty of these 
manuscripts found their way into the British 
Museum, and came under the care of the Rev. 
William Cureton, whose discovery of the Palimp- 
sest R was narrated in a former chapter. He 
studied the collection with great care, and found 
among the documents parts of the Gospels written 
upon a fragment containing eighty-two and a 
half leaves, which were in Syriac. The passages 
thus preserved were chapters of the first Gospel 
1 to 8 : 22 ; 10 : 31 to 23 : 25 ; of St. Mark only 
four verses, 16 : 17-20 ; of St. Iyuke 2 : 48 to 3 : 
J 6 ; 7 : 33 to 15 : 21 ; 17 : 24 to 24 : 44 ; and of 
St. John 1 : 1-42 and 3:6 to 7 : 37, with a few 
scattered verses of the fourteenth chapter. A few 
more passages were supplied by the discovery in 
1871 of three other leaves, which were deposited 
in the Imperial Library in Berlin ; these additions 
were St. Ivuke 15 : 22 to 16 : 12 ; 17 : 1-23 ; and 
in the fourth Gospel 7 : 38 to 8 : 19 except the 
verses containing the story of the woman taken 
in adultery. The Syriac version contained in 
these fragments bears a very striking resemblance 
to the text of Codex Bezae, D and has been, 
though perhaps wrongly, considered as made from 



VKRSIONS AND FATHERS 237 

the same original as that remarkable manuscript. 
The Syriac Codex was written about the middle 
of the fifth century, but the far greater age of the 
Greek text from which it was made has been con- 
firmed lately by the discovery of Tatian's " Diates- 
saron" 1 a Gospel harmony of the second century. 
The text of the harmony is Arabic, based upon 
the Curetonian Syriac, and as the harmony is be- 
yond doubt as early as A. D. 160, the Curetonian 
Syriac must be earlier than that, and the Greek 
text from which the Syriac was made considerably 
earlier still. Tatian's work will be more fully 
considered upon a later page. It can be seen that 
the Curetonian Syriac is of the first importance 
among translations as a testimony to the apostolic 
writings. 

The great value but fragmentary character of 
the Curetonian Gospels had led scholars to hope 
that some further discovery might be made to 
supplement this Syriac text, but it had almost 
become a vain wish until suddenly the news was 
given out that an English lady, Mrs. A. S. Lewis, 
with her twin sister, Mrs. M. D. Gibson, had 
brought a manuscript to Europe containing the 
long desired testimony. These ladies in the 
spring of 1892 visited the East, intending par- 

1 This important work has been translated into English with a 
valuable introduction and appendices, by J. Hamlin Hill, B. D. 
Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark. 



238 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

ticularly to explore some of the ancient convents 
and libraries, for which they were well fitted by a 
knowledge of Greek, and a long friendship with 
several of the most noted English scholars in 
biblical departments. Their attention had been 
turned especially to the convent at Mt. Sinai, 
where Tischendorf had found the Sinaitic manu- 
script, and to the Syriac department of its library 
by the recent discover}' there of the " Apology of 
Aris tides," an important early Christian work. 
This discovery had been made by Prof. J. Rendel 
Harris, and he urged Mrs. Lewis to examine the 
library further, and he insisted upon her taking 
an equipment for photography, in which he gave 
her a few lessons. Upon reaching the convent of 
St. Catherine, the two ladies were received with 
cordiality, and access to the Syriac books was 
readily granted. In an article in the " Independ- 
ent ' ' Mrs. Lewis tells her own story, which we 
give with omissions and further explanations : 

" Among the Syriac books which they showed 
us, I soon picked out a volume of a hundred and 
seventy- eight leaves, nearly all glued together 
with some greasy substance. I separated them 
partly with my fingers and partly with the steam 
of a kettle. They had the more fascination for 
me that no human eye had evidently looked on 
them for centuries ; and I soon perceived that it 
was a palimpsest, whose upper or later writing 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 239 

contained the stories of women saints, whilst the 
under or earlier one was the four Gospels, as I 
knew from many pages being headed ' Evan- 
gelion,' 'Matthi,' 'Marcus,' or'Luca.' I could 
also read detached words or lines where they 
appeared on the margins. I therefore at once 
determined to photograph the whole of this 
palimpsest." 

Difficulties at once arose from inexperience in 
the practice of photography and serious defects 
in the apparatus with which Mrs. Iyewis had been 
provided, and the work progressed slowly. She 
adds : 

' ' Besides this, my sister, who seconded me with 
great assiduity, sometimes lost her place in turn- 
ing over the leaves, and thus put me in possession 
of at least thirty-three duplicates, which I did not 
want, as they increased both my work and her 
own. 

" We returned home in the end of March, and 
developed most of our photographs successfully, 
with the exception of some which were sent to 
the Eastman Company and were spoiled. The 
box which contained these had been picked out 
at random from among over forty similar ones ; 
yet, strangely enough, it contained those of which 
my sister's mistakes had furnished us with dupli- 
cates. 

" When the three hundred and fifty-six pages 



24-0 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

of our palimpsest were completed, I read the 
upper writing, and found that it contained the 
stories of Thecla, Eugenia, Pelagia, Marina, 
Buphrosyna, Onesima, Drosis, Barbara, Maria, 
Irene, Buphemia, Sophia, Theodosia, Theodota, 
a short creed, and the stories of Susanna, and 
Cyprian and Justina. As my eyes were not keen 
enough to read the under writing, which ran 
between and underneath the lines of the upper, 
and was of course much more minute than the 
original, I showed my photographs to several 
Syriac scholars, asking if they could help me to 
find out to which version these Gospels belonged." 
With the aid o£ these scholars, and the careful 
transcription of a page or two, it was at last 
determined that the version was one closely allied 
to the Curetonian. It was seen that the photo- 
graphs brought to England were quite insufficient 
for a successful transcription of the whole docu- 
ment, and in company with Prof. Harris, Prof. 
Bensley, and Mr. F. C. Barkitt, Mrs. I^ewis and 
Mrs. Gibson returned to the convent. For more 
than a month this little company worked assidu- 
ously from sunrise to sunset, both upon this 
palimpsest and in cataloguing the Syriac library, 
with the following results briefly stated. The 
upper writing of the palimpsest, in one column, 
was made about A. d. 778, and to supply the vel- 
lum on which it was written, an older book was 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 241 

taken to pieces and arranged so that the Gospels 
of that older volume are interleaved with each 
other. The older writing is exceedingly faint, 
and in parts almost illegible, but the whole of the 
Gospels seems to be present. The text is in two 
columns, and in many instances comes more 
clearly to view under the action of a chemical 
reviver. Nearly the whole of the Gospel of Mark 
was transcribed, and it is noted that the last 
twelve verses of that Gospel are wanting, as in 
some of the older Greek codices. The Curetonian 
Gospels contain these verses, which may indicate 
that the new codex is older than the Curetonian. 
The old reading of the song of the angels in Luke 
2 : 14 is also restored: "Good will towards 
men." Moreover, the colophon of the manuscript 
links it to the Curetonian, describing it as "the 
separated Gospels," possibly such a harmony or 
" Diatessaron " as that of Tatian. 

It is evident that the discovery by Mrs. L,ewis 
and Mrs. Gibson is of great importance, and some 
have written that it should be considered to rank 
next to the achievement of Tischendorf at the 
same place in bringing to light the Codex Sinai ti- 
cus. But unfortunately for these pages the publi- 
cation of the full results of the study of the 
document is delayed, and the learned world does 
not yet know the complete value of the manu- 
script. The little volume ' ' How the Codex was 
v 



242 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Found," by Mrs. Gibson is hardly more than a 
publication of Mrs. Lewis' journals of the two 
visits to Sinai, and while it is interesting, is 
wholly unsatisfying so far as any description of 
the codex is concerned. 

The Peshito or the Simple Syriac, is a revision 
of the earlier version, of which the Curetonian 
and the Lewis' documents are examples. It 
became the translation generally accepted and 
used by the Syrian churches, and its position has 
not inaptly been characterized by the term the 
"Syrian Vulgate," so fully did it play the same 
part for the Syrian Christians that was served by 
the Vulgate for the Latin Christians all over the 
world. It is a very careful and faithful version, 
avoiding allegorical interpretations and all changes 
of a similar sort so frequent in the transcriptions 
of the Old Testament in the commentaries of the 
time. The Peshito covers both the Old and the 
New Testaments. All of the canonical books of 
the Old Testament were originally found, but 
from the New Testament the second and third 
Epistles of John, the second of Peter, that of Jude, 
and the Revelation are wanting. This version is 
read to-day by the various divisions of the Syrian 
church. The Nestorians among the mountain 
recesses of Kurdistan, the Monophysites, who 
dwell upon the widespread plains of Syria, the 
Maronites upon the sloping terraces of Mount 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 243 

Lebanon, and far away upon the shores of Mala- 
bar the Christians of St. Thomas, dwell equally 
upon its pages and use it in their public assem- 
blies. From all these communities manuscripts 
of the Peshito have come to light, exhibiting 
texts of no important difference, and testifying to 
the one parent of them all, which was used in 
Palestine and Syria long before the division of the 
Syrian church into its present hostile sects. 

The Philoxenian Syriac, made in the sixth cen- 
tury under the patronage of Philoxenus, Bishop of 
Mabug (Hierapolis), is another version, yet not 
wholly independent of the Peshito. It has very few 
remains in the original form, though perhaps the 
Gospels in this version are to be identified in a manu- 
script lately discovered and in the possession of the 
Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. The version 
. is probably the most servile in its exact adherence 
to the literal meaning ever made. An interesting 
note appended to the manuscripts of the Gospels 
from which the printed text is derived shows the 
labor necessary for the production of such a vol- 
ume, and excites sympathy for every copyist like 
" Poor Thomas," who wrote the note : " This is 
the book of the four holy Evangelists, which was 
turned out of the Greek language into Syriac 
with great diligence and much labour, first in the 
city of Mabug in the year 819, of Alexander of 
Macedon (a. d. 508), in the days of the pious Mar 



244 TH 3 PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Philoxenus, confessor, bishop of that city. But 
it was afterward collated with great care by me, 
Poor Thomas, with the aid of two highly approved 
and accurate Greek MSS. in Antonia, of the 
great city of Alexandria, in the holy monastery 
of the Antonians. It was again written out and 
collated in the aforesaid place in the year 927 of 
the same Alexander (a. d. 616), in the fourth in- 
diction. How much toil and diligence I spent 
upon it and its companions 1 the Lord only knows, 
who will reward every man according to his works 
in his just and righteous judgment, in which may 
we be counted worthy of his mercy. Amen." 

The Jerusalem Syriac is preserved in certain 
lesson books, or Lectionaries, representing a very 
peculiar dialect, and it has been supposed to have 
been used in a region contiguous to Palestine, 
where the Syrian speech and idiom were not pure. 
The lessons are from the Gospels, in addition to 
which only a few verses from the Acts are known. 
Only one manuscript of this version was in our 
possession until the late visits of Mrs. Lewis and 
Mrs. Gibson to Mt. Sinai, where, in connection 
with Prof. Harris, they found two other copies 
dating from 11 16 and n 20 respectively. The 
codex in the Vatican Library was written in the 
year 1030. The term Jerusalem Syriac is used 

1 Other parts of the New Testament. This version is also called 
Harkleian from Harkel, the birthplace of " Poor Thomas." 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 245 

because the grammatical forms resemble the 
Chaldee more than the Syriac, and the most ordi- 
nary words employed are illustrated only from the 
Chaldee portions of the Old Testament, from the 
Jerusalem Targum, or the Talmud. 

Two independent versions of the early Egyptian 
church have come down to modern times, known 
as the Memphitic and the Thebaic. The former 
is also known as the Coptic, and is so cited by 
Tischendorf by the abbreviation "cop.," while 
the latter is also called the Sahidic and has the 
abbreviation "sah. " We know that Christianity 
gained a strong position in Egypt from the very 
earliest times. Here monasticism established 
itself most firmly, and Paul of Thebes with his 
disciple Pachomius, and especially the great 
Antony, whose fame was established in Europe 
by his biography written by Athanasius, and 
many other noted monks like Ammonius and 
Hilarion, gave a very distinct character to the 
Egyptian church, their communities of monks 
exercising a strong influence upon the life of the 
Egyptian cities and affecting the imperial court 
even in far-off Constantinople. The Greek lan- 
guage after the conquest by Alexander, laid hold 
upon the native dialects, and either in part drove 
them out or mingled with them, so that when at 
last the Greek ceased to be spoken as a separate 
tongue, there was a marked difference between 



246 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

the dialect of Upper Egypt, remote from Alexan- 
dria and the seat of the Greek culture, and the 
tongue spoken in I^ower Egypt in the region 
nearer the court of the Ptolemies. When Christian- 
ity spread everywhere, the monks and anchorites 
bore their religion far up the Nile and to the bor- 
ders of the Iyibyian deserts, and in both dialects 
a demand arose for the Scriptures of the faith. 

Thus these translations came into being, and 
though most of the manuscripts of the Memphitic 
dialect that are extant date no earlier than the 
tenth century, Dr. I/ightfoot, through whose 
labors they are chiefly known, considers the 
Egyptian versions to be among the most impor- 
tant witnesses in textual criticism. " Of all the 
versions," he says, "the Memphitic is perhaps the 
most important for the textual critic," and he 
ranks the Thebaic as ' ' only second to the Mem- 
phitic in value.' ' The manuscripts of the The- 
baic are fewer than the Memphitic, but they go 
back in some fragments and quotations to an 
earlier age. There is a third translation in the 
Egyption group called the Bashmuric (bash) made 
for the use of scattered tribes of herdsmen living 
chiefly in the delta of the Nile. But it is rather 
an adaptation of the Thebaic than an independent 
version, and is chiefly useful in supplying the gaps 
in the Thebaic from the three hundred and thirty 
verses of John and Paul of which it consists. 



VERSIONS AND FATHERS 247 

Other versions may be passed by with brief 
mention. The Ethiopic or Abyssinian was made 
directly from the Greek, probably in the fourth 
century, although its earliest manuscripts that 
remain are of the fifteenth century. It contains 
the whole of the New Testament. It is not of 
the first value for criticism, and the same is to be 
said of the Gothic by which the gospel was given 
to the tribes of northern Kurope by the great 
Ulfilas, the Armenian version, dating about A. D. 
433, the Slavonic and others. 

The early quotations from the New Testament 
by Christian writers are nearly akin to the trans- 
lations as evidence to the text of the original, al- 
though in general they are likely to be more free 
and indefinite than the text of a version. The 
early Fathers often quoted with a greater reliance 
upon memory than would be found in most mod- 
ern books. Their copies of the Bible were fewer, 
more costly, more cumbersome than ours, and they 
did not have that extreme reverence for the very 
word and letter of the original which many 
Christians have attached in later days to the 
verses of the English Bible. If they got the 
meaning, if they quoted without violence to the 
real sense of a passage, it often sufficed them, even 
if they did not repeat more than a few words that 
were written. Yet in most instances the quota- 
tions are sufficiently exact to bear valuable witness 



248 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

to the Bible in use at that time and place, so that 
at least its corroborative or corrective force may 
be added to our materials for criticism. It is 
probable that the whole teaching of the New 
Testament could be recovered from these ancient 
Fathers if our Bibles were blotted out of exist- 
ence, so copious are their quotations and com- 
ments ; but this cannot be said of a possible re- 
construction of the continuous text of the New 
Testament, for there are many passages that re- 
ceive almost no mention at all, while we must re- 
member that the texts of the Fathers themselves 
have been subjected to the same perils of trans- 
mission which attended the other documents of 
which we have been speaking. Moreover, if we 
have determined exactly the original text of the 
Father, and that he quoted word for word the 
passage in question, even then his testimony is 
good only for the reading of that original copy, 
and this manuscript reading must then be tested 
in the ordinary way. It is thus seen that the 
testimony of the Fathers, while of great value, is 
nevertheless two or three removes from prime im- 
portance. There are two great classes of early 
Christian writings, according to the character of 
the document as Greek or Latin. The Greek 
Fathers are direct witnesses, the Latin indirect. 
To these should be added a few Syriac writers of 
importance, like Bphraem. The list in the ap- 






VERSIONS AND FATHERS 



249 



pended note will show some of the names of most 
importance for textual criticism, though it should 
be remembered that many others should be named, 
especially if other questions, as that of the canon, 
are considered. 1 

1 In the list the Latin writers are marked with a star. 

Smyrna. 

fin Ar. and Syr.) Harmonist. 

Bishop of Lyons. 

Catechetical Teacher. 

Translator of Ireneeus. (Per- 
haps about 300.) 

Disciple of Irenoeus. 

Carthage and Hippo, Africa. 

Catechetical Teacher. Alex- 
andria. 

Bishop of Carthage, Africa. 

Bishop of Coesarea. 

Bishop of Alexandria. 

Bishop of Jerusalem. 

The Translator. Bethlehem. 

Bishop of Milan. 

Of Aquileia. 

Perhaps Hilary the Deacon. 

Bishop of Cagliari. 

Bishop of Cscsarea. 

Bishop of Poitiers. 

Bishop of Antioch and Con- 
stantinople. 

Bishop of Alexandria. 

Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. 

Bishop of Hippo, Africa. 

Bishop of Mopsuestia, Cilicia. 

Bishop. Commentator. 

Bishop of Sulci. 

Archbishop of Crete. 

The dates in the list are sometimes only approximate. The 
method of citing these writers is by the first few letters of their 
names, as Tert. for Tertullian, Did. for Didymus, Epiph. for Epiph- 
anius, Aug. for Augustine, Chrys. for Chrysostom. 



103-168 


Justin Martyr 


-172 


Tatian the Syrian 


120-190 


Irenxus 


-220 


Clement of Alexandria 


-180? 


Irenaeus (Interpreter) * 


-225 


Hippolytus 


160-240 


Tertullian * 


186-253 


Origen 


-258 


Cyprian * 


264-340 


Eusebius 


296-373 


Athanasius 


315-386 


Cyril of Jerusalem 


340-420 


Jerome * 


340-397 


Ambrose * 


345-410 


Rufinus * 


-360 


Ambrosi aster * 


-370 


Lucifer * 


329-379 


Basil the Great 


-368 


Hilary * 


347-407 


Chrysostom 


-396 


Didymus 


-402 


Epiphanius 


354-430 


Augustine * 


-429 


Theodore of Mopsuestk 


-444 


Cyril of Alexandria 


-450 


Euthalius 


635-700 


Andreas 



XVII 
THE LATER DISCOVERIES 

THE very recent discovery of Syriac Gospels 
and Syriac L,ectionaries at Mt. Sinai has 
been narrated ; but several other important works 
have been brought to light in late years, and 
though they are not to be ranked with the Greek 
manuscripts, or the important versions as of value 
for critical work upon the original text, they are 
of sufficient note, as bearing upon many questions 
of the greatest interest to the student of the New 
Testament, to find mention in this volume. Only 
a few of the most important are selected for 
description. 

In the year 1875 a manuscript dated A. D. 1056 
was brought to light by the publication of a part 
of it by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of 
Serrae in ancient Mesopotamia. He had dis- 
covered the manuscript in the library of the Most 
Holy Sepulchre in Fanar of Constantinople, and 
had selected the two epistles of Clement of Rome 
for publication, which added to our previous 
knowledge of these epistles the last six chapters 
of the first and the last eight sections of the 
second. The whole volume, an octavo in form, 
250 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 25 1 

consisted of one hundred and twenty leaves of 
parchment, written in cursive characters, and con- 
taining the following works : Chrysostom's 
" Synopsis of the Books of the Bible"; "The 
Epistle of Barnabas" ; "The Two Epistles of 
Clement of Rome"; "The Teaching of the 
Twelve Apostles"; "The Epistle of Mary of 
Cassobelae to Ignatius" ; and "Twelve Epistles 
of Ignatius," that is, the current seven, one to the 
Virgin Mary, and four others. The announce- 
ment of the contents of the manuscript at the 
time of the publication of the Clementine letters 
excited some interest, but not a tithe of that 
which was at once aroused when Bryennios, now 
removed to the See of Nicomedia in Asia Minor, 
published ' ' The Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles," in 1883. This work occupied leaves 76 to 
80 of the manuscript, and was at once recognized 
as a long-lost document, which had been cited 
very early by Clement and Eusebius and others, 
and which must have belonged to a date possibly 
as early as A. d. 120, and surely not later than 
A. d. 160. It has a sub -title : Teaching of the 
Lord, through the Twelve Apostles, to the Nations, 
and consists of sixteen chapters. The teaching 
opens with a beautiful definition of the two ways, 
the way of life and the way of death, and the 
first four chapters are taken up with a description 
of the former, largely a repetition of the com- 



252 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

mandments in the Sermon on the Mount with 
many other precepts. Chapter five defines the 
way of death, and closes with the tender words : 
" May ye be delivered, children, from all these." 
The sixth chapter is an exhortation to keep the 
preceding teachings. The next four chapters are 
occupied with matters of ritual, showing that as 
yet there were only the most exceptional and 
simple departures from the practice of the apos- 
tolic church, baptism by pouring being permitted 
only when water in sufficient quantity for immer- 
sion could not be obtained, and particular stress 
being laid upon the giving of the Eucharist to 
none " except those baptized into the Lord's 
name." Rules for fasting and prayers are also 
given. The eleventh chapter concerns true and 
false prophets ; the twelfth is for the reception of 
strangers who come in the name of the Lord ; 
and the thirteenth provides for the support of 
prophets. Then follow the chapters upon the 
Lord's Day, and the appointment of bishops and 
deacons ; while the last chapter is taken up with 
a beautiful exhortation to live in watchfulness, 
expecting the coming of the Lord. In the course 
of the whole document Bryennios finds three 
references to the Old Testament, and four to the 
Apocrypha, while there are thirty to the New 
Testament, of which twenty appear to be to the 
Gospel of Matthew. 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 253 

The " Teaching," as it is generally called, or the 
Didache in the Greek, is one of the most import- 
ant non-canonical writings in its bearings upon 
the history and customs of the early Christian 
church. In common with similar writings as well 
as with the versions, it bears testimony to the 
books from which it quotes as in common use at 
the time ; but this testimony, certain as it is for 
the Scriptures quoted, must not be misused by 
making its omissions indicative of the non-exist- 
ence of canonical books. For example, it does 
not quote the Gospel of John, nor the second epis- 
tle of Peter, nor the Revelation, but in such a 
case as this the "argument from silence" is 
worthless, as will be seen when we speak below 
of the clear and abundant testimony to the fourth 
Gospel borne by the "Diatessaron " of Tatian, of 
about the same date with the " Teaching. " Indeed 
it may be said that the " Teaching," and all the 
other late discoveries, conspire to settle the questions 
of the antiquity of the canonical books in accord- 
ance with what has been in general the unwaver- 
ing opinion of conservative scholarship. The 
announcement of the discovery of this document 
at once aroused the greatest interest. Attempts 
to see the original manuscript and to obtain 
copies, and if possible fac similes by photograph 
were made, but owing to the jealousy with which 
it was guarded in the Jerusalem Monastery of the 
w 



254 TH E PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Holy Sepulchre, in Constantinople, they were 
frustrated for a long time, a photograph of a 
single page being secured at last. But the publi- 
cation of the document took place in 1883. 

The "Apology of Aristides" is another early 
Christian work discovered by Prof. J. Rendel Har- 
ris, in the library of the Convent of St. Catherine at 
Mt. Sinai, in the year 1889. ^ ts bearing upon the 
New Testament is slight, but it may be classed 
properly with the documents that throw light 
upon the sacred writings in many ways. It is one 
of the earliest apologies or defenses made by 
the Christians to the Roman emperor, and is said 
to have been presented to Hadrian by an Athen- 
ian philosopher, Aristides. The discovery of the 
Greek text was brought about in an interesting 
way through the finding of the Syriac translation 
by Prof. Harris. He was carrying his monograph 
upon the Apology through the press, and Prof. J. 
A. Robinson, of Christ's College, Cambridge, 
was reading the proof-sheets of the new volume. 
Shortly after he was in Vienna turning over Latin 
Passionals in a fruitless search for a lost manu- 
script of the " Passion of Saint Perpetua," and he 
found himself reading a Latin version of the " Life 
of Barlaam and Joshaphat, " a religious romance 
probably written by St. John of Damascus. 
Prof. Robinson detected a strange similarity of 
thought and expression with what he had been 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 255 

reading in Prof. Harris' proof-sheets. Examining 
more carefully lie found indeed the very words, 
but in Latin, of the Apology. This sent him at 
once to the works of St. John of Damascus, in 
Greek, and there, incorporated as a part of the 
story of Barlaam and Joshaphat, he read the 
Apology itself in Greek, differing somewhat from 
the Syriac, but only in inconsiderable portions. 

The " ' Diatessaron " of Tatian, a harmony of the 
four Gospels, is a most important product of the 
second century, dating as early as A. D. 160, and 
given now to the English reader in a translation 
by the Rev. J. Hamlyn Hill, B. D., entitled, 
" The Earliest Life of Christ ever compiled from 
the Four Gospels." A great many references to 
such a work had long been known before it was 
brought to the attention of the modern world. 
Eusebius, in A. d. 325, said : " Tatian, their 
former leader, composed a sort of connection and 
compilation, I know not how, of the Gospels, and 
called it the * DiatessaronS This work is cur- 
rent with some persons even to the present day." 
This would seem to imply that even then the 
work was ancient, and indeed an apocryphal work 
called "The Doctrine of Addai " supposed to 
date before the middle of the third century said : 
( ' Moreover, much people day by day assembled 
and came together for prayer and for the reading 
of the Old Testament and the New, the ' Diates- 



256 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

saron. ' " These references might be greatly multi- 
plied, but it is plain that by them all the curiosity 
of scholars to see the work of Tatian itself must 
have been great, and this makes it the more 
strange that for a long while a manuscript of it 
in Arabic lay in comparative neglect in the Vati- 
can library at Rome. This Arabic manuscript, 
numbered 14, originally had one hundred and 
twenty-five leaves, but the seventeenth and the 
one hundred and eighteenth are now wanting. It 
is supposed to have been written in Egypt at some 
time from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. 
On the last page the copyist has written in Latin : 
" Here endeth, by the help of God, the sacred 
Gospel which Tatian collected out of the four 
Gospels, and which is called the ' Diatessaron. ' " 
The manuscript was brought to the Vatican about 
A. d. 1 7 19 by Joseph Assemani, and short accounts 
of it were given by him and others, but little was 
done to concentrate upon it the attention of the 
learned world. In 1881, Zahn, a German scholar, 
made an attempt to reconstruct the "Diatessaron " 
from the quotations from it which were found 
chiefly in the Commentary of Ephraem the 
Syrian and the Homilies of Aphraates, but he 
seems to have made no use of this manuscript, 
strangely enough since he referred to it in his 
publication. But Zahn's words directed the 
attention of one of the Guild of Writers to the 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 257 

Vatican to the manuscript, and he announced his 
intention of publishing it at some future time. 
This scholar, Ciasca, one day showed the manu- 
script to a visitor from the East, Antonius Morcos, 
Visitor-Apostolic of the Catholic Copts, who at 
once said he had seen a similar copy in Egypt, 
which he could obtain for him. The promise was 
fulfilled, and in 1886 the document arrived as a 
present to the Borgian Museum in Rome. This 
second manuscript dates from the fourteenth cen- 
tury, has three hundred and fifty-five leaves, with 
the eleven lines of writing inclosed by gold, blue, 
and red lines in a rectangle upon the page. This 
work was published by Ciasca in honor of the 
pope's jubilee, in 1888, in the original Arabic, with 
a translation in L,atin, the text being based upon 
a comparison of the Vatican and the Borgian 
manuscripts. 

The " Diatessaron " affords another witness to 
the authorship of the fourth Gospel, for it begins 
with the prologue of that Gospel, and thus proves 
its use and general acceptance in the time of 
Tatian, which must throw back its origin very 
near, if not quite, to the time that has always 
been claimed for it by conservative scholarship. 
In many similar ways the work is valuable; 
though simply as a harmony, in which a correct 
mingling of the four distinct stories is secured, it 
is not of such value as many modern attempts. 



258 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

And as a testimony to the original Greek text, it 
is very insufficient, since the Arabic was a trans- 
lation from the Syriac, the native tongue of 
Tatian and of the churches for which the har- 
mony was originally made. Some have thought 
that the Syriac was probably preceded by the 
composition of the harmony in Greek, but of this 
we cannot be sure. At all events the manuscripts 
extant are at least two removes from the Greek, a 
translation of a translation, and thus of slight 
textual authority. But the work is one of highest 
interest as the earliest attempt to bring the four 
Gospels into one, and to make the story of the 
life of Jesus a connected whole for the use of 
Christians in the second century. It is the work 
of a man whose whole history testifies to his sin- 
cere desire for truth, and the consecration of all 
his energies to obtain it. 

One of the most remarkable discoveries of later 
days is that of the apocryphal " Gospel and Apoca- 
lypse of Peter. " These are but fragments found as 
parts of the same manuscript, which also contains 
thirty chapters of the pre-Christian Greek Book 
of Bnoch. The Apocalypse is not of very great 
importance, but is of great interest as meeting 
predictions of its character almost exactly, for its 
former existence was known. It is largely given 
to descriptions of heaven and hell, more particu- 
larly the latter, and seems to be an anticipation of 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 259 

Dante by many centuries. The Gospel alone 
need hold our attention, and this is valuable more 
on account of its testimony to the date of the 
canonical Gospels than to direct bearing upon the 
sacred text. The story is as follows : 

Akhmiin is a large market town in Upper 
Egypt upon the east bank of the Nile. It is 
upon the site of one of the most ancient cities, the 
Chemmis of Herodotus, and was the stronghold 
of the worship of Chem ; but in Christian times 
it became the center of the monastic life of the 
region, and a large Christian necropolis begun in 
the fifth century shows the ecclesiastical import- 
ance of the city before the time of the Arab inva- 
sion. It is said to have a large Christian popula- 
tion at the present day. During the winter of 
1886-87, some workmen under the charge of M. 
Grebaut, who was pursuing researches for the 
French Archaeological Mission, opened some 
graves, and in one of them found a little book, 
six inches by four and a half, having thirty-three 
leaves of parchment roughly cased in leather. 
The grave was of the eighth or ninth century, the 
manuscript itself is of a date not earlier than the 
eighth century, while the work it contains must 
be placed certainly as early as the last half of the 
second century. The most probable date is about 

165. 

The Gospel begins with the words, ..." But 



26o THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

of the Jews no one washed his hands, not even 
Herod, nor one of his judges, even of those who 
were minded to wash. Pilate rose up, and then 
Herod the king commands the L,ord to be taken 
away, saying, What I commanded you to do, do 
to him." This, with other passages, is taken as 
evidence of an anti-Jewish spirit in the writer, who 
seems to lose no chance to impress upon the 
reader the guilt of the Jews. The fragment goes 
on to narrate the story of the passion and resur- 
rection of Jesus, with which alone it has to do. 
Many peculiarities appear. Some of these are 
thought to mark the writer as one of the Docetse, 
a heretical sect that arose very early, as we have 
evidence in the second Epistle of St. John, where 
the Christian is warned against those called anti- 
Christ, who deny that Jesus came in the flesh, the 
docetic heresy asserting that his body was only an 
appearance, a sort of phantasm and not real flesh 
and blood. In the Gospel of Peter such a phrase 
as : " But he was silent, as if having no pain ' ' 
may have such reference, though it does not seem 
necessary. Another passage reads : " And the 
Lord cried out saying, Power, my Power, hast 
thou forsaken me ? And when he had spoken he 
was taken up." Here the word Power substituted 
for God, and "he was taken up " for " he gave up 
the ghost," are peculiarly docetic, since it was 
taught that the Christ was entirely distinct from 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 26l 

the man Jesus, and had descended upon him in 
baptism, leaving him again before his passion. 
But even this is not a necessary inference, since 
the author may have had in mind, perhaps even 
before his eye, the Hebrew or Aramaic in which 
this cry even in our Gospels is written, where the 
Hebrew word El means strength and so becomes 
the name of the Omnipotent. The Gospel of 
Peter does not write the Aramaic words in the 
text, as the canonical writers do ; but it translates, 
and losing sight of the personal reference uses the 
Greek word ftfoqctcc, or Power. But a full discus- 
sion of the docetic tendency of the fragment 
would require more space than can be given here. 
Far more important is the witness borne to the 
fourth Gospel. At least five passages indicate a 
reference to John, those which refer to the garden 
of Joseph (ver. 24) ; the Jewish law (ver. 5 and 15) ; 
the nails piercing the hands (ver. 21) but not the 
feet ; and the account of the breaking of the bones. 
John is the only one of the four evangelists record- 
ing these things. It is possible but not likely that 
all of these references came from some other source 
now lost to us, but the general inference must be 
that the writer had the fourth Gospel before him. 
Prof. Harnack, however, finds it doubtful and 
concludes that if he did know the fourth Gospel 
he did not pay much attention to it ; but Prof. J. 
Rendell Harris is of the contrary opinion ; Prof. 



262, THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Robinson declares the references unquestionable ; 
and Prof. J. H. Thayer writes very strongly that 
" half a century of discussion is swept away by 
the recent discovery at a stroke. Brief as is the 
recovered fragment it attests indubitably all four 
of our canonical books." In fact the concurrence 
of testimony offered by this fragment and the 
Diatessaron of Tatian seems to close the question 
concerning the authorship of the fourth Gospel, 
or at least to make it immeasurably more probable 
that John wrote it rather than any other. If the date 
of the gospel of Peter is in the latter half of the 
second century, or considerably earlier,. it places 
the date of the latest of the four canonical Gospels 
very early, reasonably within the limits of the first 
century. It is very interesting to note that Zahn 
and Hilgenfeld and Sanday had already shown 
the probability that Justin (103 to 168), must have 
had a fifth Gospel, as well as the four canonical 
Gospels, from which he drew statements not to be 
found in our evangelists. These are found in the 
fragment now discovered, and it is most likely 
that this is the document whose existence had 
been conjectured. Prof. Harnack shows that this 
is the fact by many citations, as he also concludes 
concerning the Apocalypse also contained in this 
manuscript, that it is not only an Apocalypse of 
Peter, which we have before us, but the Apoc- 
alypse of Peter which, at the close of the second 



THE LATER DISCOVERIES 263 

century was known in Rome and Alexandria, as 
cited by Kusebius among the Antilegomena- 
Notha, or spurious books. Harnack has divided 
both the Gospel and the Apocalypse into verses, 
by which the fragments will doubtless be cited by 
scholars. ' 

The discovery of ancient manuscripts, together 
with valuable testimony from the monuments of 
antiquity, may be expected to add to our knowl- 
edge of the Bible every year, and with ever- 
increasing frequency and amplitude. Such docu- 
ments as the tablets discovered at Tel el-Amarna 
and Lachish do not come properly within the 
scope of this work ; but the spades that are un- 
covering such remains are frequently turning up 
also documents on papyrus and parchment, among 
which are many of biblical interest, as the Petrine 
Gospel and Apocalypse found in an Egyptian 
tomb. In 1891, many classical remains of the 
greatest value were found and published besides the 

1 It would be of great interest, if space allowed the appearance 
here of an English translation of these fragments. Special and full 
discussion of the subject will be found in Adolf Harnack's " Bruch- 
stucke des Evangeliums und der Apokolypse des Petrus" Leipzig, 
1893; "The Gospel according to Peter" and the " Revelation ot 
Peter," two lectures by J. A. Robinson and M. R. James, London, 
1 892 ; also the original publication of U. Bouriant in the memorials 
published by the members of the French Archaeological Mission at 
Cairo, T, IX., fasc. I, 1892 ; especially the important work of H. B. 
Sweete : " The Gospel According to Peter." 



264 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Petrine fragments, the French. Mission at Cairo 
having published valuable Coptic fragments con- 
taining passages ranging from Genesis to Tobit 
obtained from what are described as " the appar- 
ently inexhaustible treasures of the ' White Mon- 
astery,' " while much light has been thrown upon 
many side questions of biblical history and geog- 
raphy. Altogether there is every reason for 
believing that each year will add largely to our 
store of materials, from which an intenser light 
will be thrown upon the Bible from without, and 
by which a clearer and whiter radiance will 
stream forth from the sacred pages themselves. 



XVIII 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 

THE materials of the science of textual criticism 
have been the main subject of the preceding 
pages ; but the reader will wish to know something 
of the processes by which the scholars, in the use 
of these materials, reach the results which are 
given to the Christian world in splendid editions 
of the Greek text and the English translations, 
which have been published in the last quarter of 
the nineteenth century. 1 Though it can only be a 
glance into the workshop, w r e can bear away some 
knowledge of the craft. 

Having gathered the materials upon which the 
work is to be done, the character of all the sources 
of information must be determined. In the earli- 
est times a mere numerical preponderance of 
authorities was sometimes deemed sufficient to 
settle a vexed question. With three or four man- 
uscripts in the case, two agreeing would be al- 
lowed the verdict against the one or the two of 

1 In this chapter examples of criticism in the New Testament alone 
are given. The same processes, mutatis mutandis, are applicable to 
the Old Testament. 

265 



2 66 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

variant readings. Plainly this was the crudest 
kind of criticism., for the two agreeing mig ht ; - 
of very infer:::- quality, and one of the variants 

might bear to the more discerning vision many 
marks of superiority. Again, the antiquity of a 
document has been allowed by some scholars to 
outweigh almosc every other consideration. But 
the mere age of a manuscript is no: enough to 
determine its value for critical purposes. A docu- 
ment of later date may be better than one of very 
early date, because the former may have been pro- 
duced by the comparison of many valuable codices, 
and its readings niav be the result of sreat acu- 
men and wide investigation, by which errors have 
been eliminated to a larg-e decree. It is the same 
consideration which makes the efforts of modern 
scholars of any value. Why is it possible that 
the text of Westcott and Hort. or that of Tischen- 
dorfj or one made up from the combination of the 
best results of these two editions, may be better 
than that of any single copy, even the oldest, like 
the Vatican Manuscript B ? Why does Scriv- 
ener say of the Vulgate that " it is decidedly 
superior as an instrument of criticism to its proto- 
type" in the older Latin? Scrivener says it is 
because " it does not. like its predecessor, bring be- 
fore us the testimonv, o;ood or bad. of documents of 
the second century, but only that of manuscripts 
which Jerome deemed correct and ancient at 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 267 

the end of the fourth." A great many questions 
are to be asked concerning every witness before 
the exact value of its testimony is to be finally 
known. And the kinds of evidence that are 
offered must be properly distinguished. It is not 
at all the function of this book to enter into the 
full exposition of the methods by which textual 
criticism comes to its conclusions ; nor can the 
general rules by which the science proceeds be 
laid down here. It must suffice to enumerate a 
few of them only, as an index to their general 
character, and then to set before the reader one or 
two specimens of criticisms in which the text of 
a familiar passage is elucidated. 1 

In general it may be said that of two or more 
readings the more difficult and obscure is to be pre- 
ferred to the plainer and simpler one. This rule 
is based upon the very reasonable supposition that 
any change made from an original passage, thus 
producing a false reading, would be for the pur- 
pose of throwing light upon a dark passage rather 
than to obscure what was already quite simple 
and clear. For example in Matt. 5 : 22 : "But 
I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his 
brother without cause shall be in danger of the 
judgment." A reference to the Revised New 

1 The most accessible and, on the whole, the best book for the 
beginner in practical criticism is Warfield's " Textual Criticism of the 
New Testament," Whittaker, New York. 



268 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

Testament shows that the two words u without 
cause w are left out of the text in that version, 
and the note is put into the margin: "Many 
ancient authorities insert without cause." The 
reader's Variorum Bible will direct him to the 
margin, where he will find that the uncial man- 
uscripts D and d* the versions Old Latin, 
Curetonian, Peshito, and Mempnitic, and two or 
three Fathers contain the words, while the Sina- 
itic and the Vatican manuscripts omit them, as 
also the \ ulgate and several Fathers. Of course 
the mere documentary evidence in this instance is 
strongly against the words, and it is enforced by 
the canon in favor of the harder reading, for it is 
far more likely that the words without cause were 
added to explain the difficult severity of the pas- 
sage, than that having been orioinallv there thev 
were left out with the result of adding to the ob- 
scurity. 

Another law is that the style peculiar to each 
author should be used as a test of a varied read- 
ing. Plainly an interpolation by a copyist would 
be likely to betray itself by its method of expres- 
sion. In Matt. 12 : 14, the three editors, Lach- 
mann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf, change the 
order of the Greek words in the received text to 
make them conform to readings which are more 
in the style of Matthew. This canon, however, is 
used with caution, for an author might use an ex- 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 269 

pression only once, and in that case it might seem 
at variance with his usual methods of thought 
and speech. 

A shorter reading is to be preferred to a longer, 
at least whenever the longer seems to be given in 
explanation of the shorter for?n. This rule is of 
near kin to the one first given. 

Readings which may have arise?i from contro- 
versial reasons are to be rejected in favor of those 
that do not bear that suspicion. The celebrated 
passage in 1 John 5 : 7, 8, is an instance in point, 
where some copyist saw a good chance to intro- 
duce the words that would be a strong support to 
the doctrine of the Trinity : " For there are three 
that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, 
and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And 
there are three that bear witness in earth, the 
Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three 
agree in one." The words in italics are the words 
to be rejected. They are supported by only three 
very late manuscripts of little value, but they 
are omitted by tf, A, B , and all Greek man- 
uscripts before the fifteenth century ; they appear 
in African Fathers as early as the fifth century 
and in later copies of the Vulgate. Modern edi- 
tors reject the words without hesitation. 

Another common rule is that the reading out of 
several is preferable, from which all the rest may 
have been derived, although it could not be derived 



270 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE EAITH 

froyn them. Tischendorf cautions against the use 
of this rule lest it be easily abused, but it is plain 
for example that a rude or defective sentence 
might be more likely be the original reading than 
a more polished one, especially if the introduc- 
tion of a word or two would accomplish the change. 

Attention must be paid to the genius and usage 
of each several authority in assigning the weight 
due to it in a particular instance. For example, 
the Vatican codex tends always to the abridge- 
ment of the text, while Codex Bezae shows a 
strong impulse to amplify. If then in a particu- 
lar instance B favors a shorter reading against 
an ampler text in several authorities, the ten- 
dency of B in this direction must be given 
due weight. On the other hand D amplifies 
largely, and there are many readings in this 
manuscript found nowhere else. In like manner 
the character of the versions and of ecclesiastical 
writers must be carefully considered. Are they 
prone to admit easily a reading, and are they care- 
less or critical in the use of their authorities ? 

Moreover, the genealogical connections of manu- 
scripts are of great importance. The Introduc- 
tion to Westcott and Hort's Greek Testament 
declares that " all trustworthy restoration of cor- 
rupted texts is founded upon the study of their 
history, that is, of the relations of descent or 
affinity which connect the several documents." 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 2J1 

The question of the source of a manuscript, or of 
a whole group of manuscripts, may be a simple 
one, or it may be exceedingly complex. But a 
very simple case may be taken to explain the 
force of this law. Suppose that ten manuscripts 
contain a passage, nine of them agreeing but the 
tenth presenting a rival reading. Now the nine 
manuscripts may prove on investigation to have 
all been copied directly or indirectly from the 
tenth. In that case it is the nine that show cor- 
ruption, and other tilings being equal the one 
document is to be preferred to all the others. On 
the other hand the nine may be found to have 
been derived from still another manuscript not in 
our possession, but which must have dated earlier 
than the tenth, and been of superior quality, and 
thus the reading of the nine may be better than 
that of the tenth. It will thus be seen that the 
genealogical relations of a document are very 
important, and presumably more so as the com- 
plexity of the case is increased. 

Still another important question is that concern- 
ing the class of manuscripts to which a given 
authority belongs, as having Western origin and 
peculiarities, or Alexandrine characteristics, or as 
belonging to some other group whose origin and 
nature may have been influenced by the prevail- 
ing texts, habits of transcription, methods of 
thought, and many other forces prevailing in the 



272 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

locality where it arose. It is clear how the 
weight of authority must be affected by such a 
question as this. 

Without delaying for the further specification 
of such principles of criticism, we may pass at 
once to a few examples which will show their 
application in the practical work. The Greek 
will not be quoted, but the English translation of 
King James, from which the variation will be 
marked. 

Matthew 19 : 17. For " Why callest thou me 
good? there is none good but one, that is God," 
the editors Griesbach, L,achniann, Tregelles, 
Teschendorf, Alford, and Westcott and Hort read : 
" Why askest thou me concerning the good. One 
is the good," or perhaps it may be translated, 
" there is but one that is good. " The parallel pas- 
sages in Mark 10 : 18 and L/uke 18 : 19 read in 
the same way as in the Common version, and the 
verse in Matthew, if it is to be read with these 
editors, is the variant ; which might mean either 
that the autograph of Matthew was probably like 
the other two Gospels and became corrupted ; or 
that Matthew wrote independently and quoted with 
a slight difference. But a change in Matthew's 
passage, supposing the common reading to be 
right, may have arisen from a willful interference 
of some copyist, who did not like the appearance 
of the verse as teaching the Son's inferiority to 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 273 

the Father, so that this may be a case for the 
application of the rule against adopting readings 
influenced by dogmatic tendencies. Referring to 
the textual sources we find the testimony divided 
as follows : For the common reading, " Why 
callest thou me good," all extant codices except 
six support it, though A is defective in this 
place, and two or three omit a word, as A omits 
callest, but C, B, F, G, H, K, M, S, U, V, J, are 
agreed ; so also cursives 33 and 69, and the 
Peshito, the Philoxenian, the Thebaic, the Old 
L,atin in some codices, and the Arabic versions ; 
against the common version, and in favor of the 
reading, " Why askest thou me concerning the 
good," the greatest uncials J< and B agree, 
also D and L,, the cursives 1, 22, and the Cure- 
tonian Syriac, the Jerusalem Syriac, the Old 
L,atin a, b, c, e, ff, 1,2, 1, the Vulgate, the Mem- 
phi tic and Armenian versions. Some manuscripts 
have both readings. It is thus seen that while 
the mere number of codices favors the common 
reading, the oldest and best texts support the 
reading of the editors. We need not follow out 
criticism of the rest of the verse, as sufficient has 
been said to show the grounds for the two readings 
in its principal clause, and why the choice of the 
editors is made. 

Luke 2 : 14 gives the song of the angels at the 
Nativity : " Glory to God in the highest and on 



274 TH 3 PARCHMENTS OF THK FAITH 

earth peace, good will toward men." In the Re- 
vised version we read : " Glory to God in the 
highest, and on earth peace among men in whom 
he is well pleased. ' ' But two marginal notes are 
added : ' ' Many ancient authorities read peace, 
good pleasure among men"; and "Greek, men 
of good pleasure." It would seem as if the differ- 
ence in the original must be very considerable, 
but in fact it consists only in the presence or ab- 
sence of a single letter. The last word of the 
verse in Greek is ebdoxia, or e&doxla?, the former is 
a nominative, the latter a genitive. The first 
question is plainly one of the reading. What are 
the reasons of the revisers for reading " eudokias," 
of good pleasure, instead of "eudokia," good 
pleasure? Now of the five greatest uncials C 
is defective in this place ; but K in the first 
hand, A, B first hand, and D read " men 
of good will," but no other Greek manuscript 
whatever. All the other uncials, including tf 
as amended by its seventh century corrector, 
and B by the sixth century corrector, are for the 
Common text, and with them all the cursives 
agree, and also the Memphitic, the three extant 
Syriac, 1 the Armenian, and the Bthiopic versions. 
On the other hand the Vulgate, all the old Latin, 

1 As we noted on p. 241, the new Syriac Gospel, discovered by 
Mrs. Lewis agrees with these witnesses ; especially important in the 
defectiveness of the Curetonian Syriac. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 275 

and the Gothic versions read ' ' among men of 
good will." The Latin Fathers naturally do the 
same, and the Greek Father Origen throws his 
weight for the same form. But apart from Origen 
the almost unanimous evidence of the Greek 
Fathers, twenty-two of whom nourished before the 
end of the fifth century and who must have used 
codices as pure as the Sinaitic and Vatican manu- 
scripts, is for the common reading "good will 
toward or among men." The great editors, ex- 
cept Scrivener, give their preference to the read- 
ing of the principal uncials, eudokias, although 
the overwhelming number of authorities is upon 
the other side. It would seem that there is some 
room for Scrivener's conjecture that the very early 
use of the nominative endokia by so many writers 
(ninety-two places in all) could hardly have been 
possible unless some good manuscript had the 
passage in this form, while the almost unanimous 
testimony of the later codices would point in the 
same direction. Possibly it was the error of a 
copyist which led to the addition of the single 
letter "s" in the Vatican, the Sinaitic, the Alex- 
andrine, and the Bezae codices, and the question of 
the original reading may never be wholly settled. 
But accepting the revisers' decision as to the 
Greek reading, their longer translation is mani- 
festly for the sake of clearness. The passage, if 
translated simply " men of good pleasure " might 



276 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

be taken to mean men who are well-disposed 
toward each other, or men who receive the mes- 
sage of God with good favor. The revisers con- 
sider it to refer to the condition of mind of the 
Deity; it is God's good pleasure, and therefore 
they translate " peace among men in whom he is 
well pleased." Scrivener contests both their read- 
ing of the Greek and their translation, saying : 
" ' Among men in whom he is well pleased ' (com- 
pare Iyuke 3 : 22) can be arrived at only through 
some process which would make any phrase bear 
almost any meaning the translator might like to 
put upon it." As the question is thus left, the 
passage is a good one to show how criticism is 
itself sometimes indeterminate, and how so slight 
a variation as that of a single letter may array 
authorities in almost hopeless antagonism. In 
the present instance, however, we may conclude 
by regretting that, if the revisers are correct in 
writing "peace among men in whom he is well 
pleased," the old words could not be left, "peace, 
good will toward men, ' ' for they convey the same 
thought of God's good will in simpler and more 
beautiful words. 

Mark 16 : 9-20. The critical discussion of 
this passage would be far too intricate and ex- 
tended for these pages, and the passage can only 
be referred to as one of the most interesting of 
all those in dispute. Codices tf and B, the two 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 2/7 

oldest Greek manuscripts, omit the verses. B, 
however, as will be seen from oiwifac simile repro- 
duction facing this page, "betrays consciousness 
on the scribe's part that something is left out, 
inasmuch as after tyofiouvro yap^ verse 8, a whole 
column is left perfectly blank," the only blank 
column in the whole New Testament volume. 
X does not show this peculiarity. Only a very 
few unimportant translations also omit the words, 
and the almost universal testimony of the manu- 
script witnesses except K and B is for their 
admission. It would seem possible that some 
scribe left his copy of Mark unfinished. That 
copy became the exemplar for B and ^ and per- 
haps others that are not extant, the scribes not 
daring to insert what did not appear in their 
exemplar, but the scribe of B indicating his 
knowledge of the verses by leaving a column 
vacant. The Canterbury revisers indicate their 
doubt of the verses, and Tischendorf and Hort 
are decided in their rejection of them. Dean 
Burgon and Scrivener, on the other hand, are em- 
phatic for their genuineness, and many others 
share this opinion. The whole history of this 
passage is of the most interesting character. 1 

1 A discovery by F. C. Conybeare of an Armenian manuscript dated 
in the year 986, seems to indicate that these twelve verses were writ- 
ten by one Aristion, " a disciple of the Lord" at a very early date. 
See " The Expositor," Oct., 1893. 



278 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

We conclude these examples with the very in- 
teresting case of the doxology at the close of the 
Lord's Prayer. 

Matt. 6 : 13. u For thine is the kingdom and 
the power, and the glory, forever. Amen." Even 
in the King James version these words are want- 
ing in the prayer as given by Luke 11:4, and a 
reader of the English might query whether they 
had been dropped inadvertently from the third 
Gospel or added to the first Gospel. For the ad- 
mission of the words in Matthew, as was pointed 
out in speaking of the Codex Rossanensis 
(page 206), that manuscript of the sixth century 
and the Beratinus of the same century, but prob- 
ably a little earlier, are the earliest uncials to con- 
tain them. Their admission is supported by many 
other uncials, by far the larger number, of which 
I, is the best. Nearly all the cursives give the 
words, and the Syriac, the Thebaic, and the 
Armenian versions also have them. Some of the 
versions, however, seem to hesitate, as the Cure- 
tonian which omits "and the power," the The- 
baic which omits "and the glory," and the 
Old I^atin which omits ' ' the kingdom and the 
glory." The Didache has the words, and Chry- 
sostom (398) includes them. But B, D, and Z 
omit them, while A and C are defective and 
bear no witness. The principal copies of the 
Old L,atin and the Vulgate omit them. Origen 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CRITICISM 279 

(230) and Cyril of Jerusalem (350) omit them, 
when giving a very thorough exposition of the 
prayer. Thus it appears that the highest uncial 
authority is for omission, with only later uncials 
and the cursives for admission, while the versions 
are perhaps about equally divided and the Fathers 
seem to oppose. But apart from these sources of 
information, the doxology appears in other wit- 
nesses as early as the second century, particularly 
in service books in use at a very early date, 
though in as many differing forms as there are 
documents containing it; and this fact leads to the 
conclusion that it early found its way into some 
copies of the Scriptures, perhaps about the end of 
the third or the opening of the fourth century, but 
was very rarely met with until a considerably 
later time. It should not appear as a part of the 
sacred text, and has only its great antiquity and 
the beauty of its thought to recommend it as an 
addition to the prayer in. modern use. 

Such examples might be increased almost indefi- 
nitely, if space allowed, but it is clearly beyond 
the function of the present work to enter upon the 
labors of the critics save by way of brief illustra- 
tion. From what has been said the reader can 
gain a slight appreciation of the skill and toil by 
which a correct reading of the Bible is secured. 



XIX 

CONCLUSION 

IT would be of special interest if from this point 
we could go on to trace the history of the 
various English translations by which the Bible 
has come down to the present time ; but here the 
stream is broad and our boats are sailing on it 
every day, and our knowledge of it is more easily 
attainable ; to describe what is known of this 
part of the great river flowing down to us from 
remote ages would require a volume by itself. 1 
It is only to be noted in conclusion that the 
tracing of the stream to its sources, has proved 
beyond question that the Bible comes to us from 
Jesus and his apostles with no substantial change 
through all the centuries. That Jesus knew and 
used the Old Testament as we have it we are sure. 
It is a joy to know that he fed his spiritual life 
upon its truths, and that when he began ' ' from 
Moses and from all the prophets and interpreted 
in all the Scriptures the things concerning him- 

1 The reader can be referred to no better book of recent date than 
" The History of the English Bible," by Prof. T. Harwood Pattison. 
American Baptist Publication Society. 
280 



CONCLUSION 28l 

self," l he appealed to no strange book, or to pages 
that were then essentially different from what 
they are now, but to these same writings that are 
before our eyes, although now every man reads 
them " in his own language wherein he was born." 
And to have traced the testimony for the New 
Testament ; to have found that we have to rely 
concerning it upon no mere theories, but on his- 
toric facts ; to have had recourse to the various 
documents preserved often by almost miraculous 
means ; to have tested the various readings and 
elucidated every passage, detecting even the 
slightest marks of deviation whether in accent, or 
spelling, or serious interpolation, or careless omis- 
sion ; to have collected a vast mass of evidence to 
the competent exactness of the text, and to have 
noted how discovery after discovery has confirmed 
the dates of our Gospels and Epistles as comprised 
within the apostolic time ; this has brought to us 
a reasonable faith, that cannot be shaken, in the 
later revelation which was given to teach the 
world that "God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto himself." As Tischendorf wrote: 2 
( ' A single, well-established fact weighs more in 
the scale of good sense than the most dazzling 
wit, the most ingenious sophistry with which they 

2 Luke 24 : 27. 

2 " When our Gospels were Written," translated. American Tract 
Society, p. 131. 



282 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

torture and twist the facts which occurred eighteen 
hundred years ago." It is easy to start with a 
theory, as many have done concerning the date of 
the fourth Gospel, assigning to it a very late origin 
which would remove it far from the lifetime of 
the apostle whose name it bears, and by similar 
assumptions support the theory until a fabric is 
built up that may seem fair and strong to those 
who have little opportunity to prove its weakness. 
But it is hard to do all this in the light of cold, 
well-ascertained facts. The historical method of 
study in this department has strengthened im- 
measurably the grounds for our confidence in the 
Bible, so far as its genuineness and authenticity 
are concerned. Of course, apart from this ques- 
tion is that other ground for belief in the Script- 
ure, which is quite enough for their acceptance as 
authoritative in all matters of spiritual instruction, 
that they actually are sufficient for the satisfaction 
of our souls in this respect ; they actually build up 
character and set before men the highest ideals ; 
they are quite competent for the ethical advance- 
ment of society ; in all matters essential to real 
godliness, they never fail to lead the soul aright, 
revealing God's saving love and redeeming power 
in Jesus Christ. But the calm scholar lays his 
hand upon the pages that teach thus and through 
the toil of a lifetime shows us that they really 
came from holy men of God, who walked under 



CONCLUSION 283 

the shadow of the Almighty. They were men 
who lived in the midst of the stirring scenes of 
which they wrote. They were men who walked 
with Jesns "the blessed fields'' of Palestine and 
heard from his own lips the words he uttered. 
And it is something of the highest value to every 
one who feels, as well as to those whose critical 
faculties are largely developed, to know that the 
very words of testimony of these men have come 
down to us in their essential integrity. " That 
which was from the beginning, that which we 
have heard, that which we have seen with our 
eyes, that which we beheld and our hands have 
handled concerning the word of life (and the life 
was manifested, and we have seen, and bear wit- 
ness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal 
life which was with the Father and was manifested 
unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard de- 
clare we unto you also that ye also may have fel- 
lowship with us : Yea, and our fellowship is with 
the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ ; and 
these things we write that our joy may be fulfilled. " 
These sentences, written by the Apostle John in 
his first epistle, express the truth in few words. 
In this very passage the critics read, as it is here 
quoted, "that our joy may be fulfilled," while the 
Authorized version reads in more familiar way, 
" that your joy may be fulfilled.' ' The testimony 
is about equally divided ; but surely it is indeed 



284 THE PARCHMENTS OF THE FAITH 

for the joy both of the writer and the reader, that 



what was written should spring from intimate, 
personal acquaintance with Jesus, and should be 
given accurately to the follower of Christ. The 
joy is only enhanced, if through all the Christian 
centuries the word has come down to us unharmed. 
It is of this that we are assured. With radiance 
undimmed by the lapse of the ages, God's word 
is still ' ' a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our 
path." 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Abbot, Ezra: cited 165 

liieof 166 

Abgaros: letter of... HO 

Akhinim 259 

Alexandria 1" 

Alexondifl 210 

Alford 175, 224, 272 

Allix, Peter 199 

Ammonius 142 

Antonelli 175 

Ai>ocrypha 20,21 

Aquila: (Ireek version of 90-93 

identified with Onkelos. 97 

Aramaic: in Palestine 14 

origin of - 14 

no written Bible in 26 

slight use of, in Hebrew Bible 16 
influence of, on Greek in Bible. 227 

Aristides: apology of. 23S, 254 

Armenian Version 230, 247 

Augustine 231 

Babylon 50 

Barnabas: Epistle of. 34, 1S7 

Barrett 218 

Bashmuric 246 

Battifol 210, 211 

Benton 225 

Beza 201 

Bible: origin of Greek 20 

order in, of books in Hebrew. 24 
order in ,of Jesus a n d apostles.22, 26 
of early church 28 



PAGE 

Bible : early hostility to 37 

first primed 152 

Bradshaw 214 

Bryennios 250 

Callistratos 190 

Canon: Old Testament 25 

New Testament 34, 38, 39 

human determination of. 35 

Canterbury Revision 203, 274, 277 

Carthage 230 

Catherine, St. : Convent of. 131, 181 

189, 238 

Chapters 144 

(hark .. 223 

Ciasca 257 

Cilento 205 

Clement 34, 196, 250 

Codex: of Old Testament 77-80 

Alexandrinus 34, 154, 195-193 

illustration of 138 

Basiliensis 221 

Bezie 201-204, 236, 270 

Beratinus 210,213 

Claromontanus 204 

Coislinianus 215 

Dublinensis 218 

Ephrsemi 145 

described 19S-200, 219 

Friderico Augustanus, 182, 133, 189 

Leicestrensis 223 

Montfortianus 222 

Mosquensis 215 

28 5 



286 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Codex: Number 33 221 

Number 95 224 

Purpureus 206, 212 

B 217 

Regius 211 

Rossanensis 140 

described 204-211 

illustration 209 

Ruber 214 

Sinaiticus 131 

attempt to discredit 132 

description of 179-193 

Yaticanus: described 171-179 

illustrations of. 171, 276 

W* 214 

illustration of 215 

Complutensian Polyglott 152 

Constantine 192 

Copyist 61, 122-131,243 

Cozza 177 

Criticism: science of.. 150, 151 

illustrations of 265-279 

Culture: in first three centuries... 36 

Jewish centers of 50 

after Christ 53, 108, 150 

Cureton 217, 236 

Curetonian Syriac 230 

Cursive 138, 139, 147, 220-225 

Cyprian 230 

Diatessaron 141, 237, 241, 253, 262 

Didache 251, 278 

Duchesne, Abbe du 210, 213 

Ephraem Syrus 145, 198, 256 

Erasmus 153, 221, 222 

Ethiopic Version 320 

Eusebiu's 109, 143, 151, 192, 206, 255 

Euthalius 143 

Evangelistaria 140 

Ezra 7 

Fathers: earliest writings of. 34 

value of. 148 

names of, abbreviated 148 

quotations from 247-249 



Fathers: list ot 24 

Faust 137 

Ferrar group of MSS 210 

Fragments 212-216 

in book-bindings 215, 219 

Frauds = 131-137 

detection of certain 136 

Gebhardt 204 

Gemara: origin of 54,95 

description of „ 105-107 

Gibson, Mrs. M.D 237-242, 244 

Giobertine Tincture 200, 219 

Grebaut 259 

Greek : in Palestine 17 

the world's language 18 

translations in 81 

affected by Aramaic and He- 
brew 227 

in Egypt 245 

Gregory, C. R 162, 191 

Griesbach 214, 272 

Gothic Version 230 

Gutenberg 137 

Haggada 103 

Halacha 103 

Harnack 204,261-263 

Harris, J. R 191, 210, 219, 225, 238 

244, 254, 261 

Hebrew : a sacred language 14 

in formal speech 16 

earlier and later forms of. 55 

vowels in 55 

gradual change in 57 

example of use of vowels in.... 58 

reading of Gen. 47: 31 60 

Hennas, Shepherd of 34, 189 

Hippolytus 204 

Huntington, R 235 



Ignatius 



Jerome 93. 113-118, 151, 231, 232 

Jerusalem Syriac 230 



INDEX 



287 



Jonathan: Targum of.. 
Justin 



PAGE 

. 98 
.. 262 



Keri and Kethib. 



Lachmann 157, 158, 232, 268, 272 

Lascar 199 

Latin: European, Ital., Vul 230 

African ..229,231 

Lectiouaries 140 

Lewis, Mrs. A. S 191, 237-242, _'44 

Lightfoot 101,240 

Lucar, Cyril 195 

Lyons 202 

Manuscripts : see also Codex. 

earliest modes of writing 41 

variations of. 41 

materials of. 43, 145 

destruction of. 44 

vitiated by errors 45 

strangely rescued 212 

in America 225 

Old Testament 40 

late date of 77 

agreement of text of. 64 

classesof. 66, 67 

number of 67 

of various kinds 77-80 

appearance of. 80 

illustrated 140 

age of 144 

number of uncial 14G 

signs of 147 

cursive 147 

places of. 148 

Marcion 37 

Massorah 54 

Massoretes 55, 58, 60, 64 

Medici 199 

Memphitic Version 230, 245 

Milman: on the Vulgate 114 

Minuscules 138, 220 

Mishna 54, 95, 103 



PAGE 

Moabite Stone 55 

Monks 190, 216, 245, 246 

Muratori 37 

New Testament : growth of 30 

Gospels of, lost 32 

earliest writings of. 33 

first so called 38 

modern editious of, in Greek.. 41 

materials for text of 119-136 

abundance of textual author- 
ity for 119 

principal sources of manu- 
scripts of. 120-122 

their places 148 

MBS. of. 138-149 

Mtrian Desert 235,217 

Old Testament: growth of. 47 

completion of 53 

reverence for 53 

Onkelos: Targum of. 97 

Origen: his Hexaplar 87-89, 115 

father of criticism 151 

Palestine: languages of, illus- 
trated by modern examples 19 

Palimpsest 145, 146, 217 

Papyrus 43 

Fatmos 210, 213 

Peshito 109-111, 230, 242 

Peter: Apocalypse of 37 

Gospel and Apocalypse of 258 

Praxapostoloi 140 

Philoxenian Syriac 230 

Printing 137 

Kobinson 262 

Rossano 204 

Sakkelion 213 

Samaria 68-71 

Samaritan Pentateuch. ..47,67,68, 72-74 

textual value of 74,75 

Schaff, Philip 189 



288 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Schoeffer 137 

Schulati 204 

Scribes 46, 51,61 

Scriptorium 122 

Scrivener: life of 168,169,204 

Septuagint: origin of. 13 

in Palestine 20 

the Bible of Jesus and Apos- 
tles 11-27 

description of 82-90 

manuscripts of. 89 

Shapira 135 

Siloam, Pool of: inscription at 56 

Simonides 132-135 

Sinai 180,184, 238 

Sopberim, Tract of. 62 

Stanley, A. P. : on the Septuagint, 90 

Stichometry 143, 144 

Synagogue : Hebrew used in 15 

predecessor of churches 52 

Great Synagogue 52 

Talmud 54, 94, 100, 245 

Targum 94 

origin of. 95, 96, 245 

of Onkelos 97 

of Jonathan 98 

Tatian 141, 241, 255, 257 

Tattam 216, 217, 235 

Teaching of the Twelve, The....251-253 
278 

Tertullian 230 

Textus Receptus 153 

Thayer, Prof. J. H 262 

Thebaic Version 230, 245 

Thecla, St 196 

Theodotion : Greek version of... 90, 93 

Tischendorf 87, 132, 133, 154 

life of..... 158-163, 175, 176, 179, 183 
185, 200, 204, 214, 238, 268, 272, 281 

Toledo: MSS. of. 76 

Tregelles 154 

life of 163-166, 175, 219, 222, 224 

232, 268, 272 



PAGE 

Uncial 138, 139 

number of manuscripts in 146 

Variations in readings 41, 155 

Vatican Library 171 

Vercellone 175, 177 

Verses 144 

Versions: need of 229 

value of. 147, 226-228 

signs of. 148 

described 226-247 

dates of. 229, 230 

Arabic Ill 

Armenian 247 

Aquila's Greek 90-93 

Bashmuric 246 

European Latin 231 

Ethiopic 230, 247 

Gothic 230,247 

Itala 115, 231, 232 

Italian Latin 230-232 

Memphitic 245, 246 

Old Latin 112, 229-232 

Septuagint Greek 13, 20, 23, 82- 

90,89 

Syriac 109-111, 218, 230 

Jerusalem 230, 244 

Curetonian 233, 241 

Peshito 230, 233, 242 

Harclean 230, 244 

Philoxenian 230,243 

Lewis Codex 237-242 

Thebaic 245, 246 

Theodotion's Greek 90-93 

Vulgate Latin 112, 152, 230, 232 

Vowel Points 58, 59 

Westcott and Hort's Greek 189, 266 

270, 272 
Writing : early art and remains of. 42 

Ximenes.. 152 

Zouche, Lord de la 224 



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